CANADIAN INSTITUTE FOR JEWISH RESEARCH PRESENTS THE 28TH ANNUAL GALA:
Israel in Space: Beyond the Blue (and White) Horizon — “Technology, Economy, Security.” In commemoration of Ilan Ramon z”l. Keynote speaker: Tal Inbar, head of the Space Research Center, the Fischer Institute for Air & Space Strategic Studies. Mr. Inbar will discuss the topic “The Israeli Space Endeavor: Accomplishments and Future Challenges.” Join CIJR for this special evening that will include a cocktail reception and dinner, video presentation by Rona Ramon (Ilan Ramon’s widow), greetings from the Canadian Space Agency, and more. This event will take place at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal, Thursday, April 14, 2016. For more information and tickets, call 514-486-5544, email yunna@isranet.wpsitie.com, or register online at our website: www.isranet.org
Israeli Innovation is Out of this World During Space Week: Bradley Martin, JNS, Feb. 8, 2016— While Israel already has a reputation for being the “start-up nation” and a major hub for technological innovation, this year’s Space Week in the Jewish state showed that Israeli ingenuity is—quite literally—out of this world.
Remnants of Astronaut Ilan Ramon's Final Space Experiment Arrive in Israel: Ido Efrati, Ha’aretz, Feb. 2, 2016— On the 13th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, in which Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon died along with six other crew members, the remnants of the experiment Ramon conducted in space have been returned to his homeland.
Israel’s Cyber Sector Blooms in the Desert: Jean-Luc Renaudie, Times of Israel, Jan. 30, 2016 — A modern metropolis rising from Israel’s Negev desert stands on the front-line of a global war against hacking and cyber crime, fulfilling an ambition of the country’s founding father.
The Unmaking of Claude Lanzmann: Matthew Hays, The Walrus, Feb. 25, 2016— There are, in general, two responses to seeing the Holocaust depicted on screen.
Lung Surgery on Fetus in Mother's Womb (Video): Youtube, Jan. 25, 2016
'Israel's Space Program Lagging Behind, as Iran's Surges Forward': Yaakov Lappin, Jerusalem Post, Feb. 2, 2016
IDF Training to Defend Against Cyber Attacks on Vital Infrastructure: Yoav Zitun, Ynet, Feb. 17, 2016
Business Analyst Explains Why ‘You Will Work for Israel One Day’: Shiryn Ghermezian, Algemeiner, Feb. 8, 2016
ISRAELI INNOVATION IS OUT OF THIS WORLD DURING SPACE WEEK
Bradley Martin
JNS, Feb. 8, 2016
While Israel already has a reputation for being the “start-up nation” and a major hub for technological innovation, this year’s Space Week in the Jewish state showed that Israeli ingenuity is—quite literally—out of this world. In a culmination of events highlighting Israel’s contributions to space exploration, Space Week 2016 honored the late Col. Ilan Ramon, the first and only Israeli astronaut. Ramon was a space shuttle payload specialist who was killed along with his six crew members when the Columbia shuttle disintegrated upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere on Feb. 2, 2003.
Every year, the Ramon Foundation, in conjunction with the Israeli Ministry of Science and the Israel Space Agency, organizes a number of events hosting astronauts and leading space scientists. The purpose, according to the Ramon Foundation, is for these individuals “to visit as many schools, space clubs, and science centers as possible.”
“The goal is to get as many young people as possible exposed to space research and develop their sense of curiosity in the sciences,” said Israeli Science, Technology and Space Minister Ofir Akunis. For the event, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) loaned artifacts used by Ramon. Exhibited at the Israeli Air Force Center in Herzliya, NASA included a camera used by Ramon in space, his control system, a recording drive, and other electronic equipment. Ramon was also carrying out a Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment (MEIDEX) while in space. In an exhibit designed by Tel Aviv University, NASA sent remains of that experiment to be displayed in Israel for the first time.
Rona Ramon launched the Ramon Foundation in her late husband’s honor, asking NASA chief Charles Bolden if the items could be brought to Israel for Space Week. “I’m moved that the head of NASA remembered my request and that he answered affirmatively that we could bring parts of the shuttle to Israel to enable our young people to get inspiration from the stories of Ilan. We hope that the next generation will take heart and inspiration from the story of Ilan and the shuttle,” said Rona Ramon.
NASA astronauts Garrett Reisman, Shannon Walker, and Joseph Acaba arrived in Israel in order to take part in the numerous lectures and discussions on space exploration. Other eminent individuals who came to Israel to participate in the events included Yi So-yeon, a biotechnologist and astronaut who became the first Korean to fly in space, and Samantha Cristoforetti, who is the first Italian woman in space. She also holds the records for the longest single space flight by a woman and the first person to have brewed an espresso coffee in space.
Israel is reportedly the smallest country in the world to launch its own satellites. It is also one of only 11 states with the ability to independently launch unmanned missions into space. Currently, Israel has 15 civilian satellites orbiting the Earth, two-thirds of which are communication devices, with the remainder being communication platforms.
Israeli space technology has played a critical role in the exploration of Mars. The Product Lifestyle Management software that enabled NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories to accurately model the performance of the Curiosity rover was developed by Siemens in Israel.
It was announced last week that the Israel Space Agency will become an official member of the United Nations Committee on Space Affairs. This comes after Israel was accepted into the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in October 2015.
“Israel will be able to contribute more of our know-how and abilities for peace, and pave the way for expanding international cooperation in space. We will be part of a small circle of countries that influence world priorities in the field,” said Daniel Brook, an ISA adviser on international cooperation. This accord is expected to allow Israeli experts to influence global projects, such as helping rescue teams during disasters, by using satellites in real-time.
Israeli space explorers now have their sights set on planting their flag on the Moon. SpaceIL is an Israeli non-profit organization competing in the Google Lunar X Prize, to launch a spacecraft on the Moon by 2017. GLXP is offering $20 million to land a robot on the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and have it send video, images, and data back to Earth.
On a shoestring budget, SpaceIL stands out from its well-funded competition as being the only non-profit organization in the competition whose team is 95 percent comprised of volunteers. SpaceIL aims to be the smallest and lightest spacecraft to ever land on the Moon.
REMNANTS OF ASTRONAUT ILAN RAMON'S FINAL
SPACE EXPERIMENT ARRIVE IN ISRAEL
Ido Efrati
Ha’aretz, Feb. 2, 2016
On the 13th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, in which Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon died along with six other crew members, the remnants of the experiment Ramon conducted in space have been returned to his homeland. The Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment (MEIDEX) was intended to study desert dust storms and how they affected the climate. The materials are being exhibited as part of Israel Space Week, and Nasa has sent a number of astronauts to participate in the event.
The remains of the experiment were brought to Israel partly in response to a request from Ramon’s widow, Rona, who is head of the Ramon Foundation, an educational organization she established after her deaths of her husband Ilan and son Asaf. She requested that the materials be brought to Israel for the first time, to allow young people in Israel to be exposed to the world of research science in space.
After the Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003 – when the space shuttle disintegrated over Texas and Louisiana as it reentered Earth’s atmosphere – Nasa began collecting and identifying the remnants of the shuttle, with the public’s help. Among the items found were the camera Ramon had used for the experiment, along with its control system, camera lenses, supports, recording device and other electronic items.
The MEIDEX experiment was planned by scientists from the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences at Tel Aviv University, and was performed by Ramon onboard the space shuttle. An Israeli-U.S. collaboration, it was part of the program to send an Israeli astronaut on a NASA space shuttle. More than 80 percent of the results of the Israeli experiments conducted on Columbia were successfully relayed to Earth prior to the spacecraft’s disintegration.
The experiments yielded a number of important scientific results and findings. Photographs taken by Ramon, for example, provided initial proof that dust inhibits the development of clouds. The MEIDEX experiment was intended to aid in the study of world climatic change, and entailed observing Mediterranean dust storms. It explored the phenomenon of desert dust as a pivotal factor in global warming.
Another experiment conducted using the MEIDEX camera yielded unique photographs of lightning storms. The Columbia crew was asked to document “sprites” – an electromagnetic phenomenon that occurs at high altitudes. The experiment contained ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared array-detector cameras and was launched onboard the shuttle to obtain calibrated images of desert and transported pollution aerosols over land and sea. The experiment was designed to provide sound scientific information about atmospheric aerosols.
In the second week of Columbia’s mission (which ran from January 16 until February 1), fierce storms raged over the Atlantic Ocean. In nine orbits, the astronauts photographed and recorded dust plumes moving westward from Africa. The results of the experiments are still providing data for scientific research to this day.
ISRAEL'S CYBER SECTOR BLOOMS IN THE DESERT
Jean-Luc Renaudie
Times of Israel, Jan. 30, 2016
A modern metropolis rising from Israel’s Negev desert stands on the front-line of a global war against hacking and cyber crime, fulfilling an ambition of the country’s founding father. David Ben-Gurion famously said he wanted to make the Negev bloom. Today, in the streets of Beersheba, a city of 200,000, his dream is taking shape in a form he likely did not anticipate.
Long a poor relation of hyper-modern Tel Aviv, Beersheba has traditionally been a refuge for poor, working class and Sephardic Jews of Middle Eastern descent. But the city in the vast Negev desert of southern Israel has experienced a rapid gentrification since the start of the decade, during which middle class neighborhoods have expanded.
The real estate boom in Beersheba has been fueled by the city’s ambition to be Israel’s cyber capital, especially since the creation of its industrial park CyberSpark. Two ultra-modern complexes house a dozen Israeli companies, start-ups, venture capital funds and foreign groups such as Lockheed Martin, Deutsche Telekom, Oracle and IBM.
Already, 1,500 technicians, engineers and researchers are hard at work. Many have been trained in the computer sciences department of the local Ben-Gurion University — part of a planned symbiosis between the university and the company, which are linked by pedestrian bridges.
“We have established a perfect ecosystem with the integration of Israeli companies and foreign multinationals, the university and the foundation of the Israeli army specialised in cybersecurity, which will move from the region of Tel Aviv to Beersheba,” said Tom Ahi Dror, CyberSpark project leader at the Israeli National Cyber Bureau.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken highly of the development, saying the close proximity allows “a physical interaction between security officials, academia and industry, in Israel and abroad.”
“They meet, they talk and they create together,” he told a “CyberTech” conference in Tel Aviv, calling cyber-security “vital” for a small country like Israel, which is faced with multiple threats and a favorite target of hackers. According to a study carried out in 2012, Israel “may be the most heavily targeted country in the world — by hostile hackers, non-state actors, and states — with as many as a thousand web attacks per minute.”
Tal Elal, deputy mayor of the city, pinpoints the secret of CyberSpark’s success: “We started from scratch four years ago and we designed a customized project to meet the exact needs of companies specializing in cyber-security.” Two more complexes comprising 27 buildings are to be added, and the municipality expects the population to grow by 100,000 in the next 10 years.
About 30,000 soldiers, including 7,000 career officers, will move in the coming years to bases and a technology campus to be built on 250 acres near CyberSpark and around Beersheba. As a lure from the bustle of cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, the government plans a bonus of $18,000 for single officers and $50,000 for families who spend at least five years in Beersheba.
“We will do everything to integrate this population and avoid creating ghettos where officers live, as has been the case in the past in other places,” Elal said. For the private sector, the government is also offering subsidies equivalent to 20 percent of salaries for three years to company employees who settled in Beersheba. The state hopes to expand a sector which already has 250 companies of all sizes, Israeli and foreign, in the country.
Last year, the sector’s exports reached a record $3.5 billion, according to government figures. “Israel represents only 0.1 percent of the world’s population but 20 percent of global investments (in cyber security),” said Dror. “Cyber security has a very bright future,” said Dudu Mimran, head of a Deutsche Telekom innovation laboratory based in Beersheba. “It is an endless race in which hackers are always one step ahead because it is they who take the initiative,” he added. “And it is then up to us to respond to protect businesses, governments and individuals.”
THE UNMAKING OF CLAUDE LANZMANN
Matthew Hays
The Walrus, Feb. 25, 2016
There are, in general, two responses to seeing the Holocaust depicted on screen. It’s been done too often (what more is there to say?) or it shouldn’t be done at all (its enormity is unfilmable). But if there’s any consensus about the genre, it would certainly be that Shoah—Claude Lanzmann’s nine-and-a-half-hour examination of the genocide—is the most harrowing, memorable, and brilliant film of them all.
The documentary, first released thirty years ago, is noteworthy for what it doesn’t do. After being asked in 1973 by the director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to make a film about the Holocaust as seen “through Jewish eyes,” Lanzmann opted to forgo archival footage. Instead he conducted extensive interviews with Holocaust witnesses, including onlookers, former inmates and Nazi officers (some captured by hidden cameras). While some critics have disparaged the talking-heads style of interviews, Lanzmann embraced it, using it to show ordinary language’s struggle in describing the undescribable. He was forty-seven when he started work on Shoah, and nearly sixty when he completed it. The result is a profoundly unsettling exploration of how the atrocity was carried out—Lanzmann never asks why it happened—and the ways in which memories, both collective and personal, are shaped by trauma.
After Toronto-based journalist and filmmaker Adam Benzine saw Shoah for the first time five years ago on the recommendation of a friend, he looked for a film about the “existentialist philosopher” behind the masterpiece, which Benzine assumed existed. It didn’t. “Here’s a man who fought with the resistance,” he says, “who was a lover of Simone du Beauvoir, who made this epic film about the Holocaust, who is now in his eighties, and there’s no documentary about him? I was amazed.”
Benzine set out to correct that wrong, and the result is Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah, a forty-minute tribute which has been nominated for an Oscar in the short-documentary category. Inspired by Errol Morris’s The Fog of War, which is itself elegantly constructed around an extended interview, Benzine decided to simply point a camera at the hardened director and have him talk. Sitting through five hours of interviews conducted over the course of a week in Paris, Lanzmann discusses his battles with producers and financiers and his gruelling half-decade spent editing Shoah. The movie, which flashes back to key moments from his past, includes rare footage of him flirting with de Beauvoir and chatting with Jean-Paul Sartre as well as his admission that he felt suicidal during the twelve-year making of Shoah.
This final revelation isn’t surprising, when one considers the historical material Lanzmann was dealing with. While Benzine is sparing in his use of clips from Shoah, one scene he does include is arguably the signature sequence of the film, when Lanzmann interviews Abraham Bomba, a barber in Tel Aviv, about his memories of cutting the hair of people who were about to be exterminated at Treblinka. The man goes on to describe another barber who finds himself cutting the hair of his own wife and daughter before they are sent to the gas chambers. Lanzmann presses the man, who then admits that the barber who he has been talking about in the third person was in fact himself. Lanzmann looks almost cruel in making the barber reveal the truth behind his anecdote, but Benzine gets him to discuss why he felt it so important for the story to be revealed. “His tears were as precious as blood to me,” Lanzmann says.
While his conversations with Jewish survivors proved harrowing for Lanzmann—he confides he lived the aftermath of the movie in “a sort of bereavement”—what is extraordinary is how the stories of landing his other interviews make Lanzmann and his crew seem like cold war spies. At one point they track down a Nazi officer who agrees to let them into his home. They carry a bag in with them, which contains a hidden camera and microphone. The Nazi’s wife becomes suspicious, and asks them to open the bag. They refuse, an argument erupts and several men show up at the door, suspicious of the film crew. They rush out into the street and are chased for several blocks when Lanzmann and one other crew member are beaten. Lanzmann’s injuries were so serious he spent a month recuperating in a hospital.
Getting access to Lanzmann required Benzine to adopt his own spy tactics. He met up with the director at a British film festival that was screening Shoah. Lanzmann was personable but made it clear he was busy. Contacting a friend who worked in programming at the BBC, Benzine suggested they screen Shoah for the film’s thirtieth anniversary. His friend loved the idea, so Benzine followed up: what if they accompanied it with a doc about Lanzmann? Again, great idea, but his friend added: “I can’t pay you.”
Benzine wasn’t bothered by this, but asked for a letter confirming the documentary on BBC letterhead, which he then sent to Lanzmann. The official seal of the respected British broadcaster led to a yes from Lanzmann’s office, and Benzine proceeded with two full years of intense research. This involved watching all of Lanzmann films, poring over his files and digitizing hundreds of hours of unseen outtakes of Shoah at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Benzine is upfront about Lanzmann’s reputation as a difficult person (the director kept lying to his backers how much time and money would be needed to finish the film). Legendary filmmaker Marcel Ophuls describes Lanzmann as a “megalomaniac” early in the documentary. But Benzine, who spent $50,000 of his own money on the project, says he feels “quite defensive” about the man behind Shoah. “This isn’t a making-of film about Shoah. It’s more the making of Claude—or the unmaking of Claude, as it were. Obviously, people appreciate Shoah, but I’m not sure they know the toll it took on him. Frankly, only a ‘difficult’ person could have survived the process.”
Benzine plans to bring Lanzmann, now ninety, to the Academy Awards ceremony on February 28. (In one of many of the long list of bizarre Academy oversights, Shoah wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar when it came out.) “So many people regard Shoah as an important work of cinema, and feel a debt of gratitude to him. It will be great for him to get some of that appreciation.”
CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!
Lung Surgery on Fetus in Mother's Womb (Video): Youtube, Jan. 25, 2016— Check out this amazing surgery where an Israeli Hadassah doctor performs a successful invasive lung surgery on fetus in the mother's womb.
'Israel's Space Program Lagging Behind, as Iran's Surges Forward': Yaakov Lappin, Jerusalem Post, Feb. 2, 2016— Inadequate investment and research in Israel’s civilian space program will have a harmful knock-on impact on military space industries, experts warned during a conference in Herzliya on Tuesday.
IDF Training to Defend Against Cyber Attacks on Vital Infrastructure: Yoav Zitun, Ynet, Feb. 17, 2016—IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot's decision to establish a cyber division by to was described as "more important than the merger of the Technology-Logistics Directorate with the ground forces, or the establishment of the 'Commando Brigades'" by a high-ranking IDF officer.
Business Analyst Explains Why ‘You Will Work for Israel One Day’: Shiryn Ghermezian, Algemeiner, Feb. 8, 2016—A column published by business magazine Inc. noted that Israel’s investment in tech research and development is giving it an edge over other countries.
