May - June 2006 | by Jacob Gelt Dekker
 
     
                                                                                                                                                    Eliezer Naaman & Flor Margalit

With Thanks and Gratitude to my hosts Eliezer Naaman and Flor Margalit
Eliezer Naaman is a citizen of Israel who lived in Curacao for five years. Eliezer is a strong promoter of business opportunities between Israel and Curacao. “Curacao is the ideal jumping board for Israeli businesses interested in the enormous South American market.”

Flor Margalit, a very accomplished Israeli classical musician, lived with her husband, the Israeli Envoy to the Netherlands, in The Hague for several years. She performed several concerts in Curacao and is an ardent supporter of Caribbean culture.
 

General Impressions
With muezzin's amplified minaret call for prayer and Chassidic's Parkinson -rhythmic sway at the Wailing Wall, the faithful of Jerusalem appear more faithful then ever before and show in much larger numbers. Hats, kypas, caps, shawls, keffiyas, jalabas, black silk and gabardine coats, hair locks, side curls, beards, mustaches and shaved heads add an exhibitionism of religious fervor to Israel's Abrahamic faiths.

Faith, by definition means, ‘not knowing for sure', but in Israel, faith is elevated to supreme divine certainty of the Chosen Ones, and all believe that only they belong to those Chosen Ones. The different faith denominations seem to compete in righteousness more than ever.

Israel is a modern European outpost in the Levant, a Western colony in the land of the Philistines, Philistine, in the West anglicized to, Palestine. For more than a century, Jewish settlers, escaping from pogroms and the Nazi holocaust, slaved in Judea's and Negev's arid deserts, forced their sons and daughters through higher education and sacrificed them on the battlefields. They invested all and everything in their newly chosen ancestral lands, handed down in 1948 by the British Protectorate, under the Balfour and the League of Nations agreements of 1920-22; the same agreement that also guaranteed the rights of all Palestinians.

Palestinians, willingly and unwillingly sold their family estates and belongings for unfathomable gains to these settlers; some relocated to designated areas and others piggy-bagged along with the new Jewish national élan. Their leaders, eagerly sponsored by other newly formed Middle East and Levant states as a result of he same agreements, spoke for ever about a great injustice and incessantly invoked revengeful hate against the settlers and the West, bred inertia, idleness, passivity and instigated never-ending bloody conflicts. For Palestinian youth new opportunities opened up during the recent Intifada only as stone throwers, full fledge warriors or glorified suicide bombers.

On either side of the bloody conflict, religious zeal is used as the ultimate weapon of hypocrisy, purposely and viciously manipulating and misleading the simple souls of millions.

Today, the Jewish Palestinian conflict is one of deep economic envy, political hate and racial discrimination under the banner of religious strife. In the thirty years, I observed and witnessed the situation on location, a peaceful solution has never been further away. Only a totally new reality will pale the differences and make new generations live in peace and harmony; not unimaginable for all those who once experienced the Cold War.

As pioneer, once only as settlers in the deserts, today Israel have now grown into a global high tech economy. In many fields, Israel has become world leader or is well on its way. Curacao offers an ideal jumping board as a safe haven European banking center and a products and services distribution center with its superior transportation facilities.

Meetings
BIOMED Israel 2006: a small collection of summaries

• R.Lerner, President of the Scripps Research Institute, USA: New Immunochemistry
  Through recombination of Heavy Chain and Light Chain polymers, the main components of antibodies, a near unlimited range of immune-drugs will become available shortly, most effectively fighting all kinds of antigens such as virus, bacteria, minerals and foreign bodies.
   

• Essential for development is the composition of a library of antibodies. The library should be as extensive as possible through harvesting and cloning antibodies from patients. Presently, 27 immune-drugs are on the market and 200 in clinical tests.
   

• L.Maayan, OrSenxe Ltd. Nes Ziona Israel: Non-invasive glucose monitoring
  A non invasive blood glucose monitoring device based on ‘Occlusion Spectroscopy' measuring Hb, Hct and SpO2 using the finger as testing site was tested on over 300 patients, suggesting performance similar to those of invasive monitors on the market today.
   

• B.Goldwasser. GI View Ltd. Israel: New Era in screening colonoscopy
  self-propelled, self navigating disposable colonoscopy
   

• The successful Aer-O-Scope TM is a physician controlled, disposable, miniaturized, self-propelled, self navigated endoscope incorporating a miniature omni directional camera targeting the screening colonoscopy market. The product has been successfully tested.
   

• M.Teichner, Chairman of Venousonics Ltd. Israel: Innovative non-invasive
  ultrasound technology for the therapeutic treatment of varicose veins
   

• Venousonics Ltd. developed an innovative therapeutic ultrasound technology and system. Varicose veins will be eliminated through a short, highly-focused, non-invasive, painless, one step procedure.
   

• I.Bentwich, Rosetta Genomics, Rehovat, Israel
  Using microRNA's, Rosetta identified 400 validated novel human microRNAs, a new generation of diagnostic and eventually therapeutic products for several major cancers will be developed.
   

• Prof. David Faiman, particle nuclear physicist. Director National Solar
  Energy Center, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
   

• David Faiman and JGD in the Negev desert at BG Univ. Solar Energy Ctr.
   

• Faiman asserts that the present economics of solar energy generated by selenium cells is not equitable. He suggests minimizing the plate size of the electricity generating cells and maximizing the light intensity. Light intensity can be increased cheaply by the use of
  concave mirrors. Electricity generation with water-cooled micro selenium cells placed in the focus of the light bundle will be a multiple from the traditional flat or cylindrical plates. A prototype for household use will be available
  within the next 8 months.
   

• Vonshak's Blaustein Institute is a postgraduate
  DryLand Studies Institute, endowed by the
  inventor of the gasoline pump, Jacob Blaustein.
  Vonshak experimented extensively and most
  successfully with fish farming in the desert.
  In addition, he pioneered Algae cultures, just
  using photosynthesis and water, and turned them
  into highly successful ventures. Blaustein
  institute has joint ventures in Argentine, Jamaica,
  Thailand and the USA.

World's largest solar collector. BG.Univ., Negev.  

Archeology


Avigad Vonshak, JGD and David Faiman at BG Univ.

After a lifetime of archeological excavations, Finkelstein came to the conclusion that the archeological evidence of the 10th century does not support the grandeur of the Deutronomical accounts of King David and Solomon. Rather the Omride dynasty of the, in the Bible vilified 8th century Samarian king, Ahab, seems to fit the historic picture.

See: ‘David and Solomon' by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, Free Press NY
‘The Bible unearthed' by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, Simon & Schuster

          
Prof. Avigad Vonshak. Director Jacob Blaustein Institute for Desert Research, Sede Boqer , Ben Gurion Univ.

Prof. Ronnie Reich
Head of the department of archeology of the University of Haifa and Jerusalem

Reich excavated the Citadel of David, dating from Canaanite era of about 1700 BCE. The citadel has an extensive system of tunnels and subterranean aquifers. Formerly the tunnels were attributed to King Hezekiah and became known from the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in 701 BCE. In 722 BCE, the Assyrians conquered all of the Northern kingdom and took the entire population into exile. The Southern kingdom of Judah withstood the siege. The Biblical account attributes the victory to an angle, but historically it were the troops of Nubian Pharaoh Taharka who challenged the Assyrians on the battlefield.

The tunnels of the Citadel of David are connected to the bath of Siloam. In 2005, Reich discovered the Herodean Siloam bath remains which is situated next to the Ottoman bath that is still popular with local children today. Supposedly, Jesus sent a blind man to Siloam bath, where he was cured.

Ronnie Reich and JGD at Citadel of David and Siloam Bath at the Khidron Valley in Jerusalem