Dispatch from Jerusalem

I “GHOTIT” RIGHT!

{image_1}Ofer Chermesh, a dyslexic, made a very unfortunate error in an email to a prospective business partner and decided it was time to do something about it. After partnering with Israel’s Weizmann Institute, they came up with Ghotit, a “super speller assistive technology” that enables dyslexics to dramatically improve their writing, according to their Web site. Besides catching outrageous spelling errors, the software spots out-of-context words, provides definitions and sentences to help choose the correct word, and even has a text-to-speech service so the user can hear if the word chosen is what was intended.

Netanyahu… Rules Out More Evictions

{image_1}“My government will not participate in increasing the number of evacuees…” The nation “will never make the same mistake [of evacuating citizens as it did from the Gaza Strip in 2005] again…The withdrawal from the Gaza Strip brought us neither peace nor security. The territory has become a base for the pro-Iranian Hamas movement.”

—Announced before his cabinet on August 9, 2009

Glory—Kavod

{image_1}“Then the cloud covered the tabernacle of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle” (Exod. 40:34).

We Won’t Recognize Israel

{image_1}“We will maintain the resistance option in all its forms, and we will not recognize Israel. Not only don’t we demand that anyone recognize Israel; we don’t recognize Israel ourselves. However, the Palestinian Authority government is required to do it, or else it will not be able to serve the Palestinian people…I am certain that we will hinder all the traitors who wish to remove the resistance option from the movement’s charter.”

—Senior Fatah official Rafik al-Natsheh, prior to the sixth General Assembly for the Palestinian Fatah party in August

Israel Allows Equipment into Gaza

{image_1}Gaza’s power station and a sewage purification facility got some needed materials when Israel opened up a crossing into the Gaza Strip for 17 humanitarian aid trucks carrying the equipment. According to an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) press release, among the essential items taken on the truck were an engine for the Gaza power station that had been repaired in Israel and electric poles and cables for the Palestinian Energy Authority, which falls under the authority of Mahmoud Abbas’ (Abu Mazen’s) government in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria).

Toyota Seeks Israeli Technology

{image_1}An Israeli firm will present senior representatives of Japanese multinational corporation Toyota with the new generation of car development, including software for efficient fuel consumption, technologies for safety management, and driver risk management, etc. In a bid to look into options of cooperation with Israeli companies, the visit to Israel will last about a week.

Coffee A Warm, Sweet Solace

{image_1}Sit inside, in a booth, on a balcony, or on a sidewalk…but wherever you sit, enjoy the taste and the ambience of that wonderful Israeli phenomenon—the coffee shop. They pepper Jerusalem’s landscape; some are ultra-modern while others are tiny and barely recognizable from the street. Whatever the size, all are part of the “coffee culture,” which has taken Israel by storm.

Second Unveiling of 1,700-year-old Mosaic

{image_1} One of the most beautiful mosaics in Israel, which was discovered 13 years ago in Lod (home to Ben Gurion International Airport) and then covered over, was uncovered a second time and opened to the public for three days in July. The 1,700-year-old mosaic is to be moved to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) laboratories where conservation work will be undertaken for the next two years, after which it will be 
permanently returned to Lod.

Preventing Heart Attacks with seaweed gel

{image_1}The Israeli company BioLineRx released the news in July that one of its two compounds—the BL-1040, which repairs damaged heart muscles after cardiac arrest—has been licensed by Ikaria Holdings in a US $282.5 million-deal. Injected into the heart as a liquid, when inside the body, BL-1040 turns into a protective gel scaffold, sheathing the heart muscles and giving them the ability to heal properly. In effect, it enhances the mechanical strength of the heart muscle during recovery and repair.

Meter Monitors Cows and Milk

{image_1}Israeli company AfiMilk has developed a new meter that can monitor milk production in real time and online, giving dairy farmers critical information about possible contamination to milk supplies.