Abigail Klein Leichman ISRAEL21C

Chance for podium?

Paralympic world champion rower Moran Samuel (photo by Detlev Seyb)

Israel is sending its largest-ever Olympic delegation – 89 athletes – to the Tokyo Olympics, set for July 23 to Aug. 8. And it’s sending 32 athletes to Tokyo for the Paralympics, which run Aug. 24 to Sept. 5. Do any of these competitors have a good chance of bringing home a medal?

Israel has won nine medals in 16 Summer Olympic Games: five bronze and one silver in judo, a bronze in canoeing, and a bronze and a gold in sailing.

In contrast, its Paralympic athletes have earned 123 gold, 123 silver and 129 bronze medals since 1964. However, the competition has gotten stiffer in recent years. At the London 2012 Paralympic Games, Israel won eight medals, including its first gold in wheelchair tennis. In 2016, the Paralympic team came home with just three bronze medals, won by Moran Samuel in rowing, Doron Shaziri in shooting and Inbal Pezaro in swimming.

Israel21c asked Jerusalem-based sports journalist Joshua “the Sports Rabbi” Halickman for his insights.

Olympic hopefuls

Like everyone else, Halickman has his eye on Linoy Ashram, 22. She won gold and bronze medals in the 2021 Rhythmic Gymnastics World Cup, among her many other medals. Last weekend, she won a further five gold medals at the Rhythmic Gymnastics Grand Prix in Tel Aviv – for ball, hoop, clubs, ribbon and all-around contests.

“Linoy is currently the world’s No. 1 rhythmic gymnast, based on competitions that took place in the past few months,” Halickman said. “She is one of the big hopefuls for the Israel Olympic committee. She was really gearing for summer 2020 and there was a concern that she would lose that level of achievement, but, a year later, she’s only gotten better.”

However, he noted, Ashram will be up against the Russian twins Arina and Dina Averina, who are widely expected to medal. “So it won’t be easy,” he said. “You’ve got to have a perfect performance; one mistake and you’re finished.”

Ashram will do one of her routines to a version of “Big in Japan,” a song by Alphaville. Indeed, Halickman said, “I feel she is going to be big in Japan.”

photo - Judoka Sagi Muki — Judoka Sagi Muki *(photo from Israel Olympic Committee)*

In judo, Sagi Muki, 29, is the reigning world champ in his under-81-kilogram weight category and is coming into the Tokyo Games as a realistic medal contender. “But he has not performed as well as he would have liked to in the past half year,” said Halickman. “He’s taken medals at minor competitions but not up to par compared to before the pandemic.”

Israeli judoka Peter Paltchik, 27, “has been at the top of his game over the past half year and has maybe a better chance than Sagi,” said Halickman.

Aside from those three, Halickman mentioned a couple of athletes who could surprise everyone and win a medal. One is female judoka Timna Nelson–Levy, 27, who won the 2021 Tel Aviv Grand Slam in the under-57-kilogram category. Another is swimmer Anastasia Gorbenko, only 17, who won a gold medal at the 2021 European Championships.

“Anastasia will compete in a slew of different swimming events. It’s the first time in ages Israel has a swimmer taking part in so many different categories,” said Halickman.

photo - Swimmer Anastasia Gorbenko (photo from Israel Oly — Swimmer Anastasia Gorbenko *(photo from Israel Olympic Committee)*

Perhaps the most anticipated Israeli Olympic event, however, will be baseball. With only six teams in the competition, Team Israel has a 50-50 chance of winning a medal, Halickman pointed out.

“It will be a top-level competition because they’ll be playing against world heavyweights like the United States, Japan and Mexico,” he said.

“Whenever Israel goes to the Olympics, Jews around the world want Israel to succeed,” he added. “But baseball is unique because it’s so American and this team is primarily American immigrants. They understand it’s a huge responsibility to represent the Jews in the Diaspora.”

Bottom line? “Israel could walk away from the Olympics with a half dozen medals or none. Nothing is guaranteed in sports,” said Halickman.

Paralympic hopefuls

Just as in the 2016 Rio Games, Israel’s Paralympic team is anticipated to do well in shooting, rowing and swimming in Tokyo. In particular, said Halickman, shooter Doron Shaziri and rower Moran Samuel are expected to reach the winner’s podium.

Shaziri, 54, has won five Paralympic silver medals and three bronze medals over seven Paralympic Games. His teammate Yulia Tzarnoy, who won a bronze medal at the last World Championships, also has a reasonable shot (pun intended) at medaling in Tokyo.

Samuel, 39, who competes in singles rowing, won a bronze medal in Rio. She’s also a national wheelchair basketball champion.

In swimming, the ones to watch are world champions Mark Malyar, 21, and Ami Dadaon, 20.

In May, Dadaon set two world records in his disability class at the European Para Swimming Championships: the 100-metre freestyle and 200-metre freestyle. The following month, at the World Para Swimming World Series, he improved his time in the 200-metre freestyle by less than a second, setting another world record.

photo - Mark Maylar competing in Portugal — Mark Maylar competing in Portugal. (photo by Ron Bolotin / Israel Paralympic Committee)

Malyar set a world record at the 2021 World Para Swimming World Series Finale in the men’s 800-metre freestyle in his disability class, breaking his own record, set in 2019, by more than 13 seconds.

To help Israelis get pumped for the Paralympics, the Telma cereal company is featuring the photos and stories of three Paralympic athletes on a special edition “Cornflakes of Champions” package. They include swimmer Veronika Girenko, rower Achiya Klein and goalball player Roni Ohayon.

Israel21c is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.

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Tel Aviv-born fencer Shaul Gordon, a former Richmond resident who now lives in Montreal, is part of Canada’s Olympic team. According to his bio on olympic.ca/team-canada, “Gordon made his senior fencing debut for Canada in 2013. He has since represented Canada at two Pan American Games and six FIE World Championships.

photo - Fencer Shaul Gordon — Fencer Shaul Gordon *(photo from olympic.ca)*

“Gordon earned his first career senior individual medal at the Pan American Championships in 2018, when he captured silver. Later that year, he won gold at an FIE Satellite event in Belgium.

“Gordon followed up his terrific 2018 with an even more successful 2019, starting with helping Canada bring home a third straight silver in team sabre from the Pan Am Championships. At the FIE World Championships, he advanced to the quarterfinals for the first time ever. At the Lima 2019 Pan Am Games, he also helped Canada to a team sabre silver, while winning a bronze in the individual sabre.

“Gordon fenced collegiately at Penn State for his freshman year before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania. He finished second at the NCAA Championships in 2013, tied for third in 2014, was a three-time All-American and finished his college career with an overall record of 143-30.”

For an interview with Gordon, in Hebrew, see jewishindependent.ca.

The women of Israel

Curator and art historian Yael Nitzan, founder of Israeli Women Museum. (photo by Adi Eder)

How many “she-roes” of Israel can you name? Maybe you’d with Golda Meir, Israel’s first and only female prime minister. Or the tragic and courageous spy Sarah Aaronsohn and paratrooper Hannah Senesh. The list would include physician Vera Weizmann, the first first lady of Israel, who helped establish Chaim Sheba Medical Centre, now the largest hospital in the Middle East; and second first lady Rachel Yanait Ben-Zvi, who taught Jerusalem women how to grow vegetables, milk cows and make cheese so their husbands could go out and build the state.

These and many other women who played – and continue to play – important roles in the history and culture of Israel will be immortalized later this year when the Israeli Women Museum opens in Haifa. The museum will showcase at least 100 noteworthy but not necessarily well-known women, from architects to lawyers to choreographers, says founder Yael Nitzan.

A curator, art historian and TV producer, Nitzan has overcome many roadblocks and setbacks in realizing her dream of opening Israel’s first museum dedicated to women.

“It was a struggle,” she admitted. “Now, with corona, the world has everyone sitting and listening, and, in three months, I accomplished what I could not accomplish in the past six or seven years.”

Nitzan gained the help of the Haifa Foundation in raising funds for the project, and she was given the rights to a former private school building in which the collections will be housed.

screenshot - The Haifa building that will house the Israel Women Museum — The Haifa building that will house the Israel Women Museum. *(screenshot)*

Brig. Gen. Gila Kalifi-Amir, former women’s affairs advisor to the Israel Defence Forces chief of staff, agreed to chair the museum. The board was joined by fellow Haifa residents Nadim Sheiban, director of the Museum of Islamic Art; and Prof. Aliza Shenhar, formerly a deputy mayor, ambassador to Russia and first female rector of an Israeli university.

“I found the right people,” Nitzan told Israel21c.

“There are currently about 45 women’s museums in the world, the most famous of which are the Women’s Rights [National Historic) Park in Seneca Falls, N.Y., and the Women’s Art Museum in Washington,” she said.

“The fundamental challenge in establishing a museum is not only in raising resources, but in creating a diverse and significant human and ideological infrastructure. The Israeli Women Museum must be a magnet of significance to the whole, or at least to large sections of, the population in Israel.”

Though Israel reportedly has the world’s highest ratio of museums per person, this will be the first one dedicated to the mostly unsung females responsible for weaving together its social, agricultural and business fabric. “Our museum will be on women in history and women in the arts,” Nitzan explained.

“The section on history commemorates the role of important women who have not been properly acknowledged.” Women like Hannah Maisel, who immigrated to Palestine in 1909 with a doctorate in agriculture and founded the region’s first agricultural training institute for women. And women like Rachel Roos Hertz (Harel), a Dutch resistance fighter who moved to Israel in 1950 after winning the U.S. Medal of Freedom and the U.K. King’s Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom, and became active in the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO) – itself founded by Rebecca Sieff (Ziv) from the Marks family of Marks & Spencer, and whose name graces Ziv Medical Centre in Safed.

Some of the inspiration for this section comes from Prof. Margalit Shilo’s Women Building a Nation, a book published this year in Israel.

photo - Sculpture by 90-year-old Kati Paldi — Sculpture by 90-year-old Kati Paldi. *(photo by Yael Nitzan)*

“In the art section, we will spotlight women whose work was not considered important, as well as very important female artists of today whose work is rarely shown in museums,” said Nitzan.

Artists to be included run the gamut from Ziona (Siona) Tagger, one of the most important female Israeli artists of the early 20th century, to contemporary painter Haya Graetz Ran.

“Women in Israel contributed greatly to the establishment of the state, contributed to the construction of the infrastructure of settlement, education, defence, law, government, society, culture, cinema and theatre,” Nitzan said. “But, although they left their mark, they did not receive proper recognition and respect in building society. The purpose of the museum is to raise their profile and to reshape the narrative of the critical role of women as full partners in leadership and public space design over the past century.”

Nitzan invites anyone to contribute stories or items relating to Israeli Jewish, Arab, Druze or Christian women, and even artists, poets and leaders from the Holocaust era who did not manage to get to Israel. She can be reached through the museum’s Facebook page. Donations for the project are being funneled through the Haifa Foundation.

Israel and UAE accord

TeraGroup chair and chief executive officer Oren Sadiv, left, signs a research deal with Khalifa Yousef Khouri, chair of APEX National Investment, in Abu Dhabi. (photo from WAM Emirates News Agency via Israel21c)

Overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic could be just one of many positive results of Israel and the United Arab Emirates establishing full diplomatic relations on Aug. 13, 2020. The historic pact is expected to trigger numerous joint projects in health, economics, agriculture, water technology, telecommunications, security, culture, tourism and other fields.

“Today, we usher in a new era of peace between Israel and the Arab world,” said Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in announcing the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accord with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (“MBZ”).

Even before the accord, on July 3, Rafael Advanced Defence Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries of Israel signed agreements with Abu Dhabi’s Group 42 concerning research and development collaborations for solutions to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. On Aug. 15, UAE company APEX National Investment signed a strategic commercial agreement with Israel’s TeraGroup to develop SARS-CoV-2 research. And, on Aug. 16, in the culture arena, Israeli singer Omer Adam announced that the UAE royal family invited him to perform a private concert.

Netanyahu said the two technologically advanced countries will open mutual embassies and direct flights, among other bilateral agreements.

“This is the greatest advancement toward peace between Israel and the Arab world in the last 26 years, marking the third formal peace between Israel and an Arab nation, after Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994),” he said.

One big difference is that Israel and the UAE – a federation of seven states including Dubai and Abu Dhabi – do not share a border and have never warred with one another. Under-the-radar business and security ties have been building over the past 20 years, and diplomatic ties more recently.

In 2015, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director General Dore Gold opened a diplomatic mission in Abu Dhabi connected to the International Renewable Energy Agency. In 2018, Israel’s communications minister attended a telecommunications conference in Dubai; in 2019, Israel’s foreign minister spoke at a United Nations environmental conference in Abu Dhabi.

Israel’s culture and sports minister came to the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam judo competition in October 2018, where, for the first time, the UAE permitted Israeli competitors to wear their national flag on their uniforms, and played the Israeli national anthem on the winners’ podium.

The new agreement puts an official stamp of approval on this ongoing relationship and allows it to expand in full daylight.

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The development of coronavirus vaccines, therapeutics and testing will “absolutely” figure prominently in Israeli-UAE deals following the Abraham Accord, said Jon Medved, chief executive officer of Jerusalem-based OurCrowd.

Medved has been traveling to the UAE for years, building contacts between Israeli and Gulf entrepreneurs, investors and experts.

“They’ve got world-class hospitals and there is huge interest in working with Israel on healthcare technology, telemedicine and digital health,” he told Israel21c.

Medved spoke in Abu Dhabi last December at the SkyBridge Alternatives (SALT) investment conference. He was the first Israeli investor to appear on a public stage in the UAE.

“I wasn’t sure they would let me speak openly about Israel, but, on the contrary, they wanted me to talk about Israel’s ecosystem,” said Medved. “You could tell we are in historic times. I was amazed how open they are to us and how aware they are of what is going on in our country.”

Medved reiterated that the UAE has long done business quietly with Israel but now will become a bigger trade partner and a bridge to other Gulf-region markets for Israel.

“For most of us, the Arab world has been more or less an afterthought and that’s about to change,” he said. “We will sell them enormous amounts of health gear and ag-tech, education-tech and cybersecurity,” he predicted. “For the startup community, the agreement will open up a source of tremendous new investment from the best investors in the world. [The Emiratis] are not only deep-pocketed but incredibly skilled, experienced and sharp.”

However, he added, “The real challenge for us is how we can really make this a win-win by trying to understand what they want. My sense is they don’t want to be passive investors. They want to build joint ventures, engage in technology transfer, build startups, do business and create jobs and long-term value and partnership.”

* * *

The Abraham Accord is “a huge diplomatic achievement for Netanyahu” and a “brave leadership act of Bin Zayed,” said Yoel Guzansky, senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies and co-author of Fraternal Enemies: Israel and the Gulf Monarchies (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Guzansky, who coordinated Israeli policy on Iran and the Gulf states under four national security advisers and three prime ministers, said in a press call on Aug. 13 that “the announcement was historic and dramatic, but not 100% surprising for those who have been talking behind the scenes with Emiratis.”

“Relations between Israel and some of the Gulf States, especially the UAE, [are] the worst-kept secret in the Middle East,” Guzansky said. “It was almost ordinary for Israelis to visit the Gulf representing industries from diamonds to agriculture to desalination to security. Relations evolved, especially in the past five years, in several dimensions – security intelligence, economic/commercial, cultural and religious dialogue – pushed and led by Bin Zayed.”

Guzansky believes the deal could catalyze other Arab countries in the Gulf and North Africa. Indeed, Netanyahu said he expects to “soon see more Arab countries join our region’s expanding circle of peace.”

Bahrain released a statement lauding the landmark Abraham Accord, while an anonymous Saudi Arabian source told Israel’s Globes business newspaper that “the Arab world has a great deal to gain from Israel.”

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed the start of phone service with the UAE and stated that the peace treaty “will benefit the entire region, helping secure a brighter and more prosperous future for all.”

Couple cartoons about love

Yehuda and Maya Devir and their self-drawn webcomic characters in One of Those Days. (image from Devirs)

Fans always do a double take when they see Yehuda and Maya Devir at a comics convention or in a New York City subway, or wherever. The young Israeli couple looks like they jumped right out of their virally popular webcomic One of Those Days.

“I suppose it’s like meeting a real Bart Simpson in the street,” mused Yehuda. “We act exactly the same as our characters.”

Indeed, about seven million social media followers know that Maya loves super-hot showers and hates folding laundry. They know Yehuda’s a big baby when he’s sick and is willing to say “I’m sorry” after an argument. They sympathized with the couple’s struggle to get pregnant.

Most of all, fans smile at the humorous spin the webcomic puts on everyday scenes in a marriage, from dishes in the sink to kisses on the couch.

“We get lots of emails and messages from around the world about how we changed the way couples look at their relationship and how they talk to each other,” Yehuda told Israel21c. “It’s amazing that we can make such a difference for people, that our work can connect Muslim, Jewish, black, white, rich, poor … it doesn’t matter.”

One of Those Days won the Most Creative Content Maker Award at the Inflow Global Summit 2019 Awards for social media influencers.

“We dedicated our award to our followers and supporters around the world. We have fans in Brazil, Japan, Trinidad, Iran, Iraq – basically, every country,” Yehuda said. “People thank us for making them happy once a week and making them feel they are not alone. It’s an amazing journey we’ve been on.”

The Devirs’ journey began in September 2016, when they packed up their diplomas in visual communication from Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and moved to Tel Aviv.

The newlyweds hoped to find an affordable apartment in a nice neighbourhood. And they hoped to make a living in illustration and design. Neither aspiration was terribly realistic.

“A friend suggested we post a selfie on Facebook asking friends to help us find an apartment,” said Maya. “We didn’t know how to take a good selfie, but we can draw really well, so we did a cartoon of ourselves and posted that.”

Not only did that illustration help them find an affordable flat in a very expensive city, but it also formed the kernel of One of Those Days.

While working as a freelance illustrator in the fashion, music and startup industries, Yehuda posted funny snippets on social media about being a new husband.

“Very quickly I joined him because I wanted him to make me look good,” Maya said with a laugh, “and because the story belonged to both of us. The concept was to illustrate moments we both experienced.”

In May 2017, Bored Panda posted a piece about the Devirs that went viral. “After a week, we gained half a million followers on Instagram,” Maya said. “Since then, we never stopped gaining followers. We got tons of emails and Yehuda couldn’t manage by himself. So, I left my job as art director in an ad firm and joined him full-time in October 2017. This was our dream – to create something of our own.”

They take complementary roles in each cartoon. “We start the idea together and the actual illustration is Yehuda’s talented hand,” said Maya. “Then I add my suggestions about colour composition and typography. I also manage the business.”

She said, “I opened an ecommerce shop. At first, we sold only autographed A5-sized prints of One of Those Days comics and Yehuda’s other comic illustrations. People who were into art and comics appreciated that.”

The online shop now sells three One of Those Days books plus merchandise, including apparel, shower curtains, calendars, phone skins and other items imprinted with favourite cartoons.

The Devirs’ YouTube channel has 46,000 subscribers. They have a Patreon subscription content service. They’ve appeared at comic-cons in Europe, India and will soon visit the United States. They are in great demand to give talks and lectures.

“Everything we do is because our fans suggested it,” said Yehuda. “Now, they want a TV show and we are going to try to do it. We are working with a scriptwriter at a studio in the U.S.”

photo - The online shop sells three One of Those Days books, plus other merchandise — The online shop sells three One of Those Days books, plus other merchandise. *(image from Devirs)*

Relationships proved to be a universal kind of language for the Devirs. “When we decided to move into the stage of being parents and saw it wouldn’t be that easy for us, this was a turning point,” Yehuda confided. “Would we really talk about the unpleasant experience of trying to get pregnant? It’s a super-personal subject.”

Maya felt that Yehuda’s humorous and colourful style would put the right spin on the topic and could be supportive for other couples in a similar situation. And so they introduced comics about ovulation, periods and lovemaking on demand. Messages offering support and advice came pouring in. It was like a worldwide group therapy session, Yehuda said.

The cartoon announcing Maya’s pregnancy got 16 million likes and shares. The first illustration of baby Ariel got 13 million. As of Dec. 1, she had 219,000 Instagram followers at just six months old.

“It was unbelievable to see the amount of love we got from people we didn’t know,” said Yehuda. “As Israeli and Jewish people, it was especially unbelievable to get supportive reactions from our huge fan base in the Arab world. The Israeli part is not important. We’re just the cartoon couple about love.”

Now living on Maya’s childhood kibbutz, the couple puts Ariel in the care of her two grandmothers when they travel to shows and lectures. The difficulty of parting with their baby became another comic that went viral because it was so relatable.

“It’s hard for Maya and me to leave her,” said Yehuda, “but, when she’s older, she’ll join us.”

Tolerance via playing soccer

A participant in Playing Fair, Leading Peace in Jaffa. (photo from Peres Center)

“I did not know I could play with Jews or talk to them. Now I want to and I can,” wrote an Arab middle school student whose school was one of 10 – five Jewish, five Arab – to participate in Playing Fair, Leading Peace, created by the Jaffa-based Peres Center for Peace and Innovation to unite Jewish and Arab Israeli children through soccer.

In 2018-2019, Playing Fair, Leading Peace engaged 300 fifth- to seventh-graders in Arab and Jewish sectors of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Kalansua, Kfar Saba, Beersheva and Tel Sheva. In each participating school, one class is matched with one class from the corresponding nearby school. Kids and their teachers are guided by two specially trained university students (one Jewish, one Arab) in five tolerance education and prep sessions held at their own school, and in five joint soccer matches on one another’s turf.

In these games, Arabs don’t play against Jews; each team mixes children from the hosting and visiting schools. And there are no referees; the children are given the responsibility of determining rules and mediating disputes.

“They need to communicate to solve issues during the game by themselves. This is a smart component of the program,” said Tamar Hay-Sagiv, director of the education for peace and innovation department at the Peres Center.

photo - Children in the Arab village of Kalansua with a poster stating, “We need diversity” and “We are all equal” in Hebrew and Arabic — Children in the Arab village of Kalansua with a poster stating, “We need diversity” and “We are all equal” in Hebrew and Arabic. *(photo from Peres Center)*

But it’s not an easy component, because one side speaks Hebrew and the other speaks Arabic. “We tackle the language issue by teaching through sports. They learn the language of ‘the other’ while they play,” said Hay-Sagiv.

Nor is it a simple matter to convince parents to allow cross-visits.

“There are fears and stereotypes to overcome,” acknowledged Hay-Sagiv. “We had one child in the south whose family was afraid for him to travel to a Bedouin school. It was a trust-building process between his parents and the head of the school, who gave us full support and made the family comfortable in allowing the visit. It’s always a challenge for Jewish schools to agree to travel to Arab communities, but the hospitality they receive is unbelievable.”

One child wrote on the evaluation form after the first visit: “Even after they prepared us, I was still afraid of them, but when I met them, they looked like us, only with different clothing.”

As for stereotypes, it’s not only about the Arab-Jewish divide but also about gender. “We’ve had girls thinking they are not allowed to play soccer,” said Hay-Sagiv. “We have to overcome that, too. We try to create a safe space for everyone that is fun and interactive.”

For the last 18 years, the Peres Center has used sports, specifically soccer, as a tool to break down barriers between youth, Hay-Sagiv told Israel21c.

The centre’s flagship project, Twinned Peace Sports Schools (TPSS), involves leadership training and mixed teams led by professional coaches. Britain’s Prince William kicked around a ball with the TPSS team in Jaffa during his visit to Israel last summer.

photo - Playing Fair, Leading Peace soccer match at a Jerusalem school — Playing Fair, Leading Peace soccer match at a Jerusalem school. *(photo from Peres Center)*

TPSS, started in 2002, is the first and longest-running initiative of its kind in the region. Hay-Sagiv said it “significantly influences Arab and Jewish, Israeli and Palestinian girls and boys to become agents of positive change in their community and around the world.”

The Peres Center sought a way to scale up this successful, but limited, peace-building-through-sports program in a more accessible and less expensive format that would also involve nonathletic children.

“Based on our experience, we thought it would be interesting to get into Jewish and Arab schools during school hours and engage full classrooms. This way, we can reach all the boys and girls, as well as their teachers,” said Hay-Sagiv. When the other children in the host school observe the mixed teams playing soccer together, “it’s unbelievable to see the reactions to this unusual sight. That also has an impact.”

Playing Fair, Leading Peace is supported by the Israel Football Association, which oversees Israel’s national football (soccer) team comprised of Jewish and Arab Israelis, and captained by Circassian-Israeli Muslim Bibras Natkho. The program also works with the National Union of Israeli Students (representing all Israeli universities) and the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation.

“Hopefully, next [school] year, we will double the number of participating schools,” said Hay-Sagiv.

She explained that fifth- to seventh-graders were chosen for the program “because we see this as a crucial age for exposing them to this type of experience. Verbally, they are well developed and they’re going into a tough age. You have enough time to work with them during school hours, and it’s still possible at this age to work with boys and girls together.”

Based on questionnaires distributed before and after the activity, Hay-Sagiv and her staff can see that the program effects changes in attitude.

“I want to feel with them exactly the way I feel with my friends,” wrote one child.

“I hope that we will become one family that does joint activities in togetherness and tolerance,” wrote another.

Hay-Sagiv isn’t surprised by this impact, having seen the inroads made over the years by Twinned Peace Sports Schools.

“We’re traveling to Poland to organize a sports tournament in Warsaw with Israelis, Poles, Germans, Hungarians and Russians to mark 80 years since World War II, hopefully in September,” she said. “We are thinking of bringing a mixed Jewish and Arab team from Israel.”

For more information, visit peres-center.org/en/the-organization/projects/sports/playing-fair.

Standing under the chuppah

Adir under the wedding canopy with his bride, Liat. (photo from UPnRIDE)

Forty days before his marriage, a wheelchair-bound Israeli man named Adir wrote to UPnRIDE Robotics, sharing his dream to stand under the chuppah with his bride, Liat. Chief executive officer Oren Tamari invited Adir to company headquarters in Yokne’am Illit to try the UPnRIDE 1.1 mobility device, now in transition from research-and-development to market.

“We saw he managed well with it, and we arranged for him to use the device during his wedding” on Nov. 12, Tamari told Israel21c.

The day after his wedding, Adir posted on UPnRIDE’s Facebook page: “Thank you all for [the] wonderful experience and magnificent night. Our chuppah was so amazing, people cried when [they] saw me standing and praying. My wife and I just want to say that you made our night as close as possible to perfection!!!”

UPnRIDE was invented by Amit Goffer, whose ReWalk robotic exoskeleton allows paraplegics to stand, walk, navigate steps and even run marathons. Goffer, who has a PhD in electrical and computer engineering, could not use ReWalk himself because he is a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down. So he and Tamari formed a new company to develop an upright mobility solution enabling any wheelchair-bound person – quadriplegics, paraplegics, people with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, ALS and traumatic brain injury – to recline, stand and navigate indoors and outdoors.

Jointed braces and harnessing straps provide support, while advanced motion technology and real-time computing ensure automatic balancing and stability on uneven terrain. Goffer said other types of standing wheelchairs can’t be used outdoors because of the danger of tipping over.

UPnRIDE is now raising funds, working toward U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance and doing usability studies with all kinds of wheelchair users. A major study has begun at the U.S. Veterans Health Administration’s Centre of Excellence in New York to determine the benefits for UPnRIDE users. Many health problems are associated with long-term wheelchair sitting, from muscle atrophy to cardiovascular disease.

Goffer, chief technology officer and president of the company, doesn’t yet have his own UPnRIDE because the sample models are for testing. He borrows one on weekends and for special events, such as his daughter’s wedding last July.

Like Adir, he was able to stand under the chuppah and with his family for photos.

“My son and middle daughter were already married years ago,” he said, “and it was a very different feeling at the wedding of my ‘baby’ because I was standing like the rest of the family. I was also able to mingle with guests as never before.”

Eventually, Goffer expects UPnRIDE to become his everyday wheelchair. “I enjoy it because I can stand and sit easily whenever I want; I don’t have to be moved and lifted by someone else. It can recline, too, so it’s better for napping or receiving medical treatment.”

The smart wheelchairs are to be manufactured in a northern Israel factory run by Sanmina, an American electronics manufacturing services provider. Tamari said the company plans to use proceeds from the current funding round for marketing, establishing mass production and developing advanced and new models.

For more information, visit upnride.com or email [email protected].

Benefits from being bilingual

Dr. Carmit Altman of Bar-Ilan University. (photo by Carmit Altman)

“Anna,” a preschooler in the Israeli city of Bat Yam, was thought to be cognitively impaired because testing her in Hebrew showed her cognitive skills lagging behind her classmates. But, when retested in her home language, Russian, she was found to be normal. About half of all Israeli children speak a different language at home than in school, making Israel possibly the world’s best “laboratory” for researching the still little-understood phenomenon of growing up with two or more spoken languages.

One important Israeli discovery is that comparing bilingual kids like Anna to monolingual children is like comparing apples to pears, according to Bar-Ilan University Prof. Sharon Armon-Lotem. For two decades, her lab has studied language-acquisition processes of Israeli preschoolers from English-, Russian- and Amharic-speaking homes.

Roughly 20% of children entering first grade in Israeli secular public schools come from immigrant homes in which the dominant language is not Hebrew. The largest cohort is Russian-speakers, numbering about 1.2 million out of an overall Israeli population of 8.7 million.

Adding more than a million Israeli households where Arabic, Yiddish or African languages are spoken, the percentage of bilingual children climbs to as high as 50% of the general population, Armon-Lotem told Israel21c.

To evaluate bilingualism properly, one must understand that children who grow up speaking two or more languages in everyday life are not using the same brain processes as do monolingual children learning a second language in school, note Armon-Lotem and other Israeli experts. And, if bilingual children like Anna initially have a smaller Hebrew vocabulary, they have better syntax and concept-generation skills in both languages. Overall, they develop language no differently than monolingual peers, unless they have developmental language disorder (DLD).

DLD, estimated to affect five to seven percent of both monolingual and bilingual children, causes dramatic delays in language acquisition not related to other impairments. DLD might manifest differently in each of a child’s two languages, but usually shows up as difficulty with word retrieval and grammar. Since these same phenomena can happen in typically developing bilingual children as they learn the majority language, bilingual children with and without DLD are often misdiagnosed.

Armon-Lotem emphasized that bilingualism does not lead to impairment. From 2009 to 2013, she led a network of researchers from 26 European and five non-European countries in formulating standards for characterizing typical bilingual development and identifying atypical bilingual development in more than 30 language pairs. Research by Natalia Meir in Armon-Lotem’s lab was the first to show that it is possible to disentangle typical and impaired language development, and with 90% accuracy.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in this area in Israel,” said Prof. Joel Walters, professor emeritus of linguistics at Bar-Ilan and now chair of the department of communication disorders at Hadassah Academic College in Jerusalem, which hosts hundreds of specialists at its annual conference on communication disorders in multilingual and multicultural populations.

Walters’ study of the processes underlying how the brain merges two or more languages into a single utterance is informed by recent brain imaging of bilinguals. One of his focuses is “codeswitching,” when a bilingual speaker starts a sentence or word in one language and switches to the other.

“Codeswitching was once thought of as a random phenomenon but actually it’s very systematic and occurs in sentences, phrases and even within words,” Walters told Israel21c. An English-Hebrew bilingual child might tell her sister “muzi,” merging the English word “move” with the Hebrew “zuzi,” for example.

Walters and two co-authors recently published in the International Journal of Bilingualism about their study of Russian-Hebrew bilingual 6-year-olds asked to retell a Russian story to a Hebrew-speaking puppet, a Hebrew story to a Russian-speaking puppet and a codeswitched story to a bilingual puppet. The children were also asked to respond to conversational questions asked in Russian, Hebrew and codeswitched speech about holidays and activities at home and in preschool. In both tasks, the children did more codeswitching from Russian to Hebrew, “because that’s the language of school and street and that’s the language that will help them integrate socially.” However, in children with impaired language development, the directionality is not as predictable, said Walters.

As Israeli researchers formulate better ways of evaluating and treating bilingual children with DLD, Armon-Lotem is planning to establish a global database of voice files sent from clinicians and preschool teachers who work with bilingual children in different language pairs. Data scientists at Bar-Ilan will use new methods in machine learning and big data to better identify existing markers of DLD and possibly find new markers.

Am I Russian or Israeli?

Carmit Altman of Bar-Ilan’s School Counseling and Child Development Programs studies the social impact of growing up bilingual, looking at family language policy – what language parents want their child to speak and how they enforce that preference.

One of her group’s frequently cited studies, published in 2014, examined the language policy of 65 Israeli families raising their children in Russian. They found three main approaches: parents with a strict policy of speaking only Russian at home; parents who don’t forbid Hebrew at home and sometimes encourage it; and those who actively promote both Hebrew and Russian at home for speaking and reading. They predicted that the strictest language policy would result in the best performance in Russian but the middle group performed just as well. Children from this group also showed an advantage in Hebrew in tasks predictive of future Hebrew literacy skills. “In syntax, all the kids did better in Hebrew than in Russian, with no group differences,” Altman said.

Altman’s lab also studies how bilingual children and their parents perceive their children’s language abilities, and their sociolinguistic identity and preferences. They invented a “magic ladder” scale on which preschoolers can attach happy and sad magnet faces to rate their agreement with statements such as “I speak Hebrew well.”

Parents of both English-Hebrew and Russian-Hebrew bilingual children think their children prefer Hebrew, but the kids say they prefer their home language, Altman found. And, while the kids consider themselves hyphenated Israelis, their parents consider them totally Israeli.

There were also differences in performance perception. “In Russian-Hebrew families, both children and parents think the children perform similarly in Russian and Hebrew. In English-Hebrew families, children feel they perform better in English, while parents think the children have similar abilities in both languages,” said Altman.

In collaboration with Armon-Lotem, Altman’s group is developing tools to help researchers understand these differences and to help preschool teachers detect which bilingual children may need a DLD evaluation.

Advantages of bilingualism

The ability to speak more than one language is widely accepted as beneficial in ways from the practical (business, academics, travel) to the medical (possibly delaying symptoms of dementia). When Altman was doing a post-doc in New York, she and her husband spoke Hebrew to their children at home. She feels that raising kids bilingually “is a gift you can give your child for life” and that cross-generational communication is one strong motivation for doing so.

“Having more than one language and more than one culture is definitely a huge advantage in life,” agreed Armon-Lotem.

It is less clear whether bilingualism sharpens “executive functions,” such as shifting attention and inhibiting instructions, as was believed in past decades.

“In one study, we found that English-Hebrew bilingual children with DLD show an advantage in executive function over monolingual children with DLD,” said Armon-Lotem. “But we didn’t find the same in Russian-Hebrew bilinguals. We might be able to find cognitive advantages for certain populations at certain age ranges and within certain tasks.”

Armon-Lotem and her colleagues are beginning to study bilingualism in children with autism and Down syndrome, and will provide tools to help bilingual preschool children, including Eritrean asylum-seekers in Jerusalem, tell coherent stories in Hebrew and their home language.

Voice will have control

One day, your car might be able to sense your mood and, if you’re agitated, send soothing music. (photo from autospies.com)

Back in 1995, Shlomo Peller founded Rubidium in the visionary belief that voice user interface (VUI) could be embedded in anything from a TV remote to a microwave oven, if only the technology were sufficiently small, powerful, inexpensive and reliable.

“This was way before IoT [the Internet of Things], when voice recognition was done by computers the size of a room,” Peller told Israel21c. “Our first product was a board that cost $1,000. Four years later, we deployed our technology in a single-chip solution at the cost of $1. That’s how fast technology moves.”

But consumers’ trust moved more slowly. Although Rubidium’s VUI technology was gradually deployed in tens of millions of products, people didn’t consider voice-recognition technology truly reliable until Apple’s virtual personal assistant, Siri, came on the scene in 2011.

“Siri made the market soar. It was the first technology with a strong market presence that people felt they could count on,” said Peller, whose Ra’anana-based company’s voice-trigger technology now is built into Jabra wireless sports earbuds and 66 Audio PRO Voice’s smart wireless headphones.

“People see that VUI is now something you can put anywhere in your house,” said Peller. “You just talk to it and it talks back and it makes sense. All the giants are suddenly playing in this playground and voice recognition is everywhere. Voice is becoming the most desirable user interface.”

Still, the technology is not yet as fast, fluent and reliable as it could be. VUI depends on good internet connectivity and can be battery-draining.

Peller said, in five years’ time, voice user interface will be part of everything we do, from turning on lights, to doing laundry, to driving.

“I met with a big automaker to discuss voice interface in cars, and their working assumption is that, within a couple of years, all cars will be continuously connected to the internet, and that connection will include voice interface,” he said.

As voice user interface moves to the cloud, privacy concerns will have to be dealt with, he added. “We see that there has to be a seamless integration of local (embedded) technology and technology in the cloud. The first part of what you say, your greeting or ‘wakeup phrase,’ is recognized locally and the second part (like, ‘What’s the weather tomorrow?’) is sent to the cloud. It already works like that on Alexa but it’s not efficient. Eventually, we’ll see it on smartwatches and sports devices.”

Diagnosing illness

Tel Aviv-based Beyond Verbal analyzes emotions from vocal intonations. Its Moodies app is used in 174 countries to help gauge what speakers’ voices (in any language) reveal about their emotional status. Moodies is used by employers for job interviewees, retailers for customers, and in many other scenarios.

The company’s direction is shifting to health, as the voice-analysis platform has been found to hold clues to well-being and medical conditions, said Yoram Levanon, Beyond Verbal’s chief scientist. “There are distortions in the voice if somebody is ill and, if we can correlate the source of the distortions to the illness we can get a lot of information about the illness,” he told Israel21c. “We worked with the Mayo Clinic for two years confirming that our technology can detect the presence or absence of a cardio disorder in a 90-second voice clip.

“We are also working with other hospitals in the world on finding verbal links to ADHD, Parkinson’s, dyslexia and mental diseases. We’re developing products and licensing the platform, and also looking to do joint ventures with AI companies to combine their products with ours.”

Levanon said that, in five years, healthcare expenses will rise dramatically and many countries will experience a severe shortage of physicians. He envisions Beyond Verbal’s technology as a low-cost decision-support system for doctors.

“The population is aging and living longer, so the period of time we have to monitor, from age 60 to 110, takes a lot of money and health professionals. Recording a voice costs nearly nothing and we can find a vocal biomarker for a problem before it gets serious,” said Levanon.

Beyond Verbal could synch with the AI (artificial intelligence) elements in phones, smart home devices or other IoT devices to understand the user’s health situation and deliver alerts.

Sensing your mood

Banks use voice-analysis technology from Herzliya-based VoiceSense to determine potential customers’ likelihood of defaulting on a loan. Pilot projects with banks and insurance companies in the United States, Australia and Europe are helping to improve sales, loyalty and risk assessment regardless of the language spoken.

“We were founded more than a decade ago with speech analytics for call centres to monitor customer dissatisfaction in real time,” said chief executive officer Yoav Degani. “We noticed some of the speech patterns reflected current state of mind but others tended to reflect ongoing personality aspects, and our research linked speech patterns to particular behaviour tendencies. Now we can offer a full personality profile in real time for many different use cases such as medical and financial.”

Degani said the future of voice-recognition tech is about integrating data from multiple sensors for enhanced predictive analytics of intonation and content. “Also of interest,” he said, “is the level of analysis that could be achieved by integrating current state of mind with overall personal tendencies, since both contribute to a person’s behaviour. You could be dissatisfied at the moment and won’t purchase something but perhaps you tend to buy online in general, and you tend to buy these types of products.”

In connected cars, automakers will use voice analysis to adjust the web content sent to each passenger in the vehicle. “If the person is feeling agitated, they could send soothing music,” said Degani.

Personal robots, he predicted, will advance from understanding the content of the user’s speech to understanding the user’s state of mind. “Once they can do that, they can respond more intelligently and even pick up on depression and illness,” he said.

Degani predicted that, in five years’ time, people will routinely provide voice samples to healthcare providers for analytics, and human resources professionals will be able to judge a job applicant’s suitability for a specific position on the basis of recorded voice analysis using a job-matching score.

Israel leads way in workplace

Orit Sulitzeanu, executive director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centres in Israel. (photo from Facebook)

Orit Sulitzeanu, executive director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centres in Israel, was invited to address the United Nations on March 29 about the issue of combating sexual harassment in the workplace. She presented Israel’s precedent-setting voluntary code against sexual harassment.

“We started working on this several years before the current #MeToo campaign,” Sulitzeanu told Israel21c. “The code is an interesting idea that could be adapted and implemented in other places in the world.”

Based on the Israeli law against sexual harassment in the workplace – be it an inappropriate look, remark, touch, text message or worse – the code provides concrete details on how to implement the regulations, which Sulitzeanu compares to “a quilt with a lot of patches missing.”

For example, the law requires every business or organization with more than 10 workers to designate a special ombudsman to deal with sexual harassment complaints, but it doesn’t specify details about training and supporting this ombudsman.

The Association of Rape Crisis Centres turned to the Standards Institute of Israel four years ago to help add definitions and explanations to the laws after winning a tender from the Israeli Ministry of Economics to draft a voluntary code to give managers a more exact tool for avoiding and handling sexual harassment incidents.

With this funding and additional funding from groups including the Hadassah Foundation in the United States, Israeli labour law experts from women’s organizations worked for two years on guidelines.

“We also developed, with Dr. Zeev Lehrer from Tel Aviv University’s department of gender studies, a tailor-made intervention that enables us to specifically understand the special characteristics of sexual harassment in a specific organization and then develop a prevention program suited to the organization,” said Sulitzeanu.

The priority is to introduce the voluntary code against sexual harassment in local municipalities, businesses and organizations that the association identifies as high risk – such as the military, police, healthcare organizations, airlines, media outlets and first-response networks – because of vulnerability factors such as big gaps in age and gender (usually, older men supervising young women), nighttime working hours and frequent operations outside the office environment.

The municipality of Ra’anana was the first to adopt the voluntary code for its thousands of workers, followed by a high-tech company (EIM). Magen David Adom, Israel’s national emergency response network, will adopt it next.

A leader in this area

Sulitzeanu’s invitation to the UN has its roots in a co-sponsored resolution that Israel spearheaded in March 2017, titled “Preventing and Eliminating Sexual Harassment in the Workplace,” in light of statistics showing that up to 60% of women worldwide have experienced harassment.

The resolution condemns sexual harassment in all forms, especially against women and girls, and emphasizes the need to take measures to prevent and eliminate it, raise awareness, educate, promote research, and collect and analyze data and statistics.

“Israel succeeded in passing this resolution in the UN and that positioned Israel as a leader in this area,” said Sulitzeanu. “That’s why they called me to talk about the voluntary code.”

As far as she knows, no other country aside from Australia has any similar code of conduct to address sexual harassment in the workplace.

“Just as Israel is the start-up nation for technology and science, we are also the start-up in social initiatives,” she said.

Harassment subculture

Israel’s voluntary code also applies to situations such as child athletes traveling to competitions accompanied by adult coaches, doctors and physical therapists. Sulitzeanu saw the danger inherent in such circumstances long before this year’s revelation of sexual abuse by the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team doctor.

“It’s not enough to talk about the law in at-risk organizations,” she said. “Some have a known subculture of sexual harassment and need tailor-made interventions.”

Sulitzeanu expects employers to be eager to embrace the code in order to avoid lawsuits and the loss of productivity that comes from sexual harassment allegations due to absences, emotional stress and office gossip.

“This is a precedent-setting way to deal with the problem,” she said. “I hope the government will compel every municipality to have this code, and I hope all organizations at risk will also adopt it. It is not complicated or expensive and it makes your workplace a caring, safe place for employees.

“Once these guidelines are embedded in the DNA of the organization, they become easy to implement.”

The Standards Institute of Israel will conduct an inspection of each participating workplace every two years to determine if the standards set out in the code are being upheld.

Disruptive Israeli companies

One of Ormat Technologies’ geothermal power plants. (photo from Ormat)

Could Israel be the country that finally puts fossil fuels to rest with the dinosaurs? “When we talk about killing fossil fuels, Israel is not yet seen as tops in the world, as we are in water or cyber technologies. But in each related niche – solar energy, battery technologies and electric car components – there is tremendous respect for Israeli companies,” according to clean-energy activist Yosef Abramowitz, aka “Kaptain Sunshine,” whose Energiya Global social development company is bringing solar power to Africa.

Two early solar-energy pioneers founded in Israel, BrightSource Energy and Ormat Technologies, are now headquartered in the United States with myriad international projects to their credit. BrightSource built the world’s largest solar electricity generation installation, in California, using nanoparticle coatings developed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Ormat built one of the world’s first solar-power fields, near the Dead Sea, and is a leading geothermal and recovered-energy generation producer.

Although Israeli electric-vehicle (EV) network Better Place had great disruptive potential, its bankruptcy in May 2013 dashed those hopes. Yet Abramowitz believes the mega-fail led to something positive. “Better Place spawned a whole industry of 500 [Israeli] startups in the automotive sector, largely related to electric cars and the software and hardware that will kill the combustion engine,” he told Israel21c.

In 2011, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office launched its Alternative Fuels Administration and Fuel Choices Initiative, aiming to implement government policy and support for fuel alternatives research and industry that can serve as a model for other countries while helping reduce Israel’s dependence on oil for transportation. Since then, the number of alternative fuel research groups in Israel has grown from 40 to about 220 and the number of companies in this field to about 500. Globally, renewable energy is a $359 billion business. Here are 10 Israeli companies trying to accelerate the end of fossil fuels.

Aquarius Engines. The lightweight Aquarius engine has a single-piston linear engine. A cylinder moves the fuel from side to side to generate electrical current, much like sea waves can do through an up-and-down movement. A car fitted with the Aquarius engine would have a range of 1,200 kilometres per 50-litre tank, which would have to be filled every five or six weeks. Aquarius is working with Peugeot to test its engine in a concept car. The company also is developing a lightweight portable generator based on its technology.
Brenmiller Energy. Founded in 2012 in Rosh Ha’ayin, Brenmiller Energy has created products for renewable energy including a thermal storage system that hybridizes any power source – wind, solar, biomass, nuclear, natural gas – to provide reliable, clean energy anywhere. The B-Gen unit’s first cycle transfers the heat coming from different sources; the discharging cycle delivers steam on demand on a megawatt or gigawatt scale. Commercial projects are underway in several countries. Founder Avi Brenmiller was involved in solar power plant design in Spain and in the United States through the Israeli company Luz Industries, acquired by Solel and then by Siemens.
Doral Renewable Energy Resources Group. Doral, in Ramat Gan, was the first company to connect a solar photovoltaic (PV) system to the national electricity grid, back in 2008. Its several branches operate renewable energy projects (natural gas, biogas, wind, solar) throughout Israel, especially in kibbutzim in the periphery and in rural areas, including what will be the largest (170 megawatts) PV power plant in Israel. Doral recently entered a joint venture agreement with Invenergy, the largest privately held electricity producer in the United States. Doral is planning to introduce advanced means of electricity production, storage and smart-grid solutions to eliminate the need for external electricity suppliers.
Eco Wave Power. The Tel Aviv-based company’s proprietary technology extracts energy from ocean and sea waves and converts it into affordable, zero-emission renewable electric power. EWP has projects in various stages in the United Kingdom, Gibraltar, China, Chile, Israel and Mexico.
ElectRoad. Founded in 2013, ElectRoad of Rosh Ha’ayin develops underground electric coils that recharge EVs wirelessly as they travel. Copper-and-rubber electromagnetic induction strips are installed inside the asphalt and smart inverters are installed on the sides of the road. A coil unit is attached beneath any kind of EV to receive the power over a small air gap for safety. ElectRoad plans pilot projects on a short public bus route in Tel Aviv and in a European city.
Energiya Global. This Jerusalem-based renewable-energy developer will invest $1 billion over the next four years to advance green power projects across 15 West African countries. Energiya Global and its associated companies developed the first commercial-scale solar field in sub-Sahara Africa, in Rwanda, and broke ground on a similar plant in Burundi that will supply 15% of the country’s power. Energiya Global now has fields at various stages of development in 10 African countries.
H2 Energy Now. This company is building a prototype battery-free solution for storing and increasing the usability of alternative energy from intermittent sources – sun and wind – to meet times of peak demand reliably. Radio waves separate water into hydrogen and oxygen and then recombine them in a fuel cell when energy is needed. As last year came to an end, H2 Energy Now was in the finals for several contests and was in talks with worldwide energy corporations. In addition, the company was one of four winners of the AES Corporation’s 2017 Open Innovation Contest, held in Washington, D.C., for designing a ceramic drone enabling unmanned inspection solutions for extreme heat environments in the global power industry.
New CO2 Fuels. Founded in 2011, NCF is raising funds toward a working model of its technology to transform two waste streams – industrial water and carbon dioxide – into a hydrogen-carbon monoxide synthetic gas, which is then turned into liquid fuels, plastics and fertilizer. The conversion process is fueled by concentrated solar energy or byproduct heat from the industries themselves. NCF signed a cooperative agreement with Sinopec Ningbo Engineering to address carbon dioxide pollution in China.
Solaris Synergy. Based in Jerusalem, Solaris Synergy developed a solar-on-water power plant that converts a water surface into a cost-effective and reliable solar-energy platform. Solaris and Pristine Sun of San Francisco received a BIRD grant to collaborate on a utility-scale floating PV solar energy system to be installed in California. In October 2016, Solaris installed a 100kWp Floating PV system on a reservoir in Singapore. Recently, Solaris formed a partnership with Electra Energy to plan large projects in Israel.
StoreDot. Electric vehicles can never be mass marketed unless they have batteries that store a charge longer, weigh less and charge up faster. StoreDot of Herzliya concentrates on fast charging. It is developing a pack for EVs comprised of hundreds of its proprietary EV FlashBattery cells. Together, the cells take only five minutes to charge fully and provide up to 480 kilometres of driving distance. In addition, FlashBattery is environmentally safer than a lithium-ion battery, using organic compounds and a water-based manufacturing process.