Budget-Pinched Ocean Scientists Find a Bargain-Priced Research Ship

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
February 5, 2010

David Blumenfeld for The Chronicle

Sven Beer, of Tel Aviv U., used the "MedEx," a subsidized research vessel, to collect and classify thousands of samples of phytoplankton at sea, as a "biological indicator of pollution," he says. "The phytoplankton are the basis of the food web."

By Matthew Kalman

Herzliya, Israel

The R/V Mediterranean Explorer squats at its moorings in a remote corner of the Herzliya Marina like an ugly duckling among the sleek ocean-going yachts anchored in this millionaires' water park north of Tel Aviv.

But for marine scientists in Israel and abroad, the MedEx, as it is affectionately known, is a thing of beauty. The ship and its crew carry scientists, their experiments, and students for $400 per day, a fraction of the cost of similar research vessels. The Shikmona, an Israeli-government research vessel, costs $6,000 a day to hire. American ships handling research financed by the National Science Foundation cost even more.

The availability of this bargain-priced platform at a time when budgets are being squeezed and scientists need to stretch their available dollars has created excitement among marine researchers in the Mediterranean and pushed forward several important projects, such as investigations of the effects of pollution and climate change.

Miriam Alster

Beverly Goodman, a marine geologist at the U. of Haifa, in a lab aboard the ship, from which she found evidence of ancient tsunamis in offshore deposits along the Israeli coast.

Amir Yurman

Beverly Goodman, of the U. of Haifa, greets Mediterranean fauna on a dive to collect sediment cores.

Beverly Goodman, a marine geologist at the University of Haifa, used the ship to help discover the first evidence of ancient tsunamis in offshore deposits along the Israeli coast. "My research would have been impossible without the MedEx," she said.

The ship was custom-built in France in 2004 for EcoOcean, an Israel-based nonprofit organization dedicated to marine environmental research. Its use is subsidized by the group (which itself is financed largely by a Swedish family foundation). Just 69 feet long and 21 feet wide, the ship includes a wet lab, with drains and sluices, and a dry lab, with microscopes and a freezer. A diving platform and aft-deck working area contain a hydraulic crane and a 12-bottle water sampler that can be lowered into the sea.

The ship also has diving equipment and a Seabotix Mini-ROV (for remotely operated vehicle), an unmanned submarine controlled from on board the MedEx. Eight researchers and three crew members can live aboard the ship comfortably for several weeks and can travel 1,700 nautical miles before refueling.

Sea Change in Noah's Flood

In 2005, William B. Ryan, a senior scholar in marine geology and geophysics at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, set out on the MedEx for an expedition to the Black Sea that would change the understanding of how that vast body of water was formed. He was looking for data to support a hypothesis that the sea had been transformed from a freshwater lake to a saltwater sea connected to the Mediterranean during a sudden, calamitous event, not as a result of a gradual change. Many scholars think such a disaster could be the basis of the biblical story of Noah's flood.

Mr. Ryan was unable to secure funds for the expedition from the National Science Foundation. But with just $50,000 raised in the United States and Israel, he was able to hire the MedEx and its crew for a whole month.

"It made a large difference to us because it let us obtain some very useful, important observations that we would not have done or been able to do because the cost of using other platforms was too high," Mr. Ryan said. "To take a U.S. ship across the Atlantic would require one of the larger-class vessels, and they would run in the range of $20,000 to $30,000 a day, and it would be overcapacity for what we needed to do. The MedEx fit the bill just perfectly."

Sailing around the clock, Mr. Ryan and his crew took core samples of sediment on a tight grid from three regions of the submerged shelf, near Istanbul, that would have been an ancient beach of the Black Sea before it was flooded.

"We not only were able to study across the transition from lake sediment to saltwater sediment, but we found gravels and pebbles that we think were washed in from the straits," he said, referring to the present-day Bosporus and Dardanelles, in Turkey. "Water of high velocity would have been required to carry these pebbles in from the sea because of their size. It's not the only interpretation, but the flood hypothesis would predict these materials would be there, and they were." Studies based on findings from the expedition, published in the journals Marine Geology and Sedimentary Geology, support the idea of a flood.

Sediment cores taken from the sea floor are often stored for months before they can be studied, said Mr. Ryan. "Traditionally large ships do not do this. They are used for collecting cores to be brought back to a depository and then distributed to researchers."

But on the MedEx, he said, "we could open the cores within minutes of them arriving on the deck, carry out our examination, carry out a very important preliminary analysis, which would let us choose the very next location to optimize what we were doing. So it turned out to be much more efficient and effective than had we been on a large ship."

Yossi Mart, a professor of marine studies at the Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies, at Haifa, was Mr. Ryan's partner on the 2005 expedition. (He is also a trustee of EcoOcean.) The low cost of using the MedEx, said Mr. Mart, enables him to take undergraduates and even high-school students on research trips at sea. "It costs more to hire a bus for the day than to use the ship," he said.

Focus on Phytoplankton

The MedEx has also been to the Red Sea, where it explored the coral reefs off Eritrea, but most of its work has been in the eastern Mediterranean, an area that, because of its shallow tides, scientists believe can be an early indicator of changes in the marine environment across the globe.

"The changes that occur in the eastern Mediterranean, if the natural processes continue, will affect [every] ocean eventually," Mr. Mart explained. "Therefore the Mediterranean can serve as proxy to oceanographic changes that might take place because climate is changing."

The MedEx has been the platform for a series of expeditions on phytoplankton, the microscopic marine organisms that account for some 40 percent of the world's photosynthesis and are the basis of the marine food web. What happens to them when the climate or other aspects of the environment change is a matter of intense scientific interest.

Sven Beer, a professor in the department of plant sciences at Tel Aviv University, is the scientific director of EcoOcean. He uses the MedEx to classify thousands of species of phytoplankton by their DNA to see if they can be used to measure marine pollution.

Water samples are trapped using the 12 open-ended bottles, which can be winched down to depths of several hundred meters. Monitors in the onboard lab display the depth, salinity, light intensity, and concentration of phytoplankton inside the bottles, which can be individually sealed by remote control and brought onto the deck for analysis.

"We look at the DNA pattern, and we compare it in a gene bank to DNA patterns that have been made already for known species in laboratories all over the world," said Mr. Beer. "This is a biological indicator of pollution. Because the phytoplankton are the basis of the food web, the changes in the environment that change the phytoplankton composition are the ones that are important."

Mr. Beer is also tracking dinoflagellates, sometimes toxic organisms that, when they multiply or "bloom" in huge numbers, can poison sea creatures and, through them, human beings, in tropical and northern seas. His research aims to see whether those sea blooms are increased to dangerous levels by pollution.

The MedEx cannot do everything. Larger ships can pull up much longer cores from the ocean bottom and thus get information that goes further back in time. And the ship's seismic equipment is more limited than that on a larger vessel. "It can do small things, but what it does, it does well," Mr. Mart said.

One of those things, said Mr. Beer, is to change the face of marine research in the eastern Mediterranean.

"It's going to give us the opportunity to do important science that we couldn't do without this platform," he said. "We could not do this monitoring without having a ship where we can bring up water samples. It's an absolute must."

Budget-Pinched Ocean Scientists Find a Bargain-Priced Research Ship

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

January 31, 2010

Amir Yurman

Beverly Goodman, of the U. of Haifa, greets Mediterranean fauna on a dive to collect sediment cores.

By Matthew Kalman

Herzliya, Israel

The R/V Mediterranean Explorer squats at its moorings in a remote corner of the Herzliya Marina like an ugly duckling among the sleek ocean-going yachts anchored in this millionaires' water park north of Tel Aviv.

But for marine scientists in Israel and abroad, the MedEx, as it is affectionately known, is a thing of beauty. The ship and its crew carry scientists, their experiments, and students for $400 per day, a fraction of the cost of similar research vessels. The Shikmona, an Israeli-government research vessel, costs $6,000 a day to hire. American ships handling research financed by the National Science Foundation cost even more.

The availability of this bargain-priced platform at a time when budgets are being squeezed and scientists need to stretch their available dollars has created excitement among marine researchers in the Mediterranean and pushed forward several important projects, such as investigations of the effects of pollution and climate change.

David Blumenfeld for The Chronicle

Sven Beer, of Tel Aviv U., used the "MedEx," a subsidized research vessel, to collect and classify thousands of samples of phytoplankton at sea, as a "biological indicator of pollution," he says. "The phytoplankton are the basis of the food web."

Miriam Alster

Beverly Goodman, a marine geologist at the U. of Haifa, in a lab aboard the ship, from which she found evidence of ancient tsunamis in offshore deposits along the Israeli coast.

Beverly Goodman, a marine geologist at the University of Haifa, used the ship to help discover the first evidence of ancient tsunamis in offshore deposits along the Israeli coast. "My research would have been impossible without the MedEx," she said.

The ship was custom-built in France in 2004 for EcoOcean, an Israel-based nonprofit organization dedicated to marine environmental research. Its use is subsidized by the group (which itself is financed largely by a Swedish family foundation). Just 69 feet long and 21 feet wide, the ship includes a wet lab, with drains and sluices, and a dry lab, with microscopes and a freezer. A diving platform and aft-deck working area contain a hydraulic crane and a 12-bottle water sampler that can be lowered into the sea.

The ship also has diving equipment and a Seabotix Mini-ROV (for remotely operated vehicle), an unmanned submarine controlled from on board the MedEx. Eight researchers and three crew members can live aboard the ship comfortably for several weeks and can travel 1,700 nautical miles before refueling.

Sea Change in Noah's Flood

In 2005, William B. Ryan, a senior scholar in marine geology and geophysics at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, set out on the MedEx for an expedition to the Black Sea that would change the understanding of how that vast body of water was formed. He was looking for data to support a hypothesis that the sea had been transformed from a freshwater lake to a saltwater sea connected to the Mediterranean during a sudden, calamitous event, not as a result of a gradual change. Many scholars think such a disaster could be the basis of the biblical story of Noah's flood.

Mr. Ryan was unable to secure funds for the expedition from the National Science Foundation. But with just $50,000 raised in the United States and Israel, he was able to hire the MedEx and its crew for a whole month.

"It made a large difference to us because it let us obtain some very useful, important observations that we would not have done or been able to do because the cost of using other platforms was too high," Mr. Ryan said. "To take a U.S. ship across the Atlantic would require one of the larger-class vessels, and they would run in the range of $20,000 to $30,000 a day, and it would be overcapacity for what we needed to do. The MedEx fit the bill just perfectly."

Sailing around the clock, Mr. Ryan and his crew took core samples of sediment on a tight grid from three regions of the submerged shelf, near Istanbul, that would have been an ancient beach of the Black Sea before it was flooded.

"We not only were able to study across the transition from lake sediment to saltwater sediment, but we found gravels and pebbles that we think were washed in from the straits," he said, referring to the present-day Bosporus and Dardanelles, in Turkey. "Water of high velocity would have been required to carry these pebbles in from the sea because of their size. It's not the only interpretation, but the flood hypothesis would predict these materials would be there, and they were." Studies based on findings from the expedition, published in the journals Marine Geology and Sedimentary Geology, support the idea of a flood.

Sediment cores taken from the sea floor are often stored for months before they can be studied, said Mr. Ryan. "Traditionally large ships do not do this. They are used for collecting cores to be brought back to a depository and then distributed to researchers."

But on the MedEx, he said, "we could open the cores within minutes of them arriving on the deck, carry out our examination, carry out a very important preliminary analysis, which would let us choose the very next location to optimize what we were doing. So it turned out to be much more efficient and effective than had we been on a large ship."

Yossi Mart, a professor of marine studies at the Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies, at Haifa, was Mr. Ryan's partner on the 2005 expedition. (He is also a trustee of EcoOcean.) The low cost of using the MedEx, said Mr. Mart, enables him to take undergraduates and even high-school students on research trips at sea. "It costs more to hire a bus for the day than to use the ship," he said.

Focus on Phytoplankton

The MedEx has also been to the Red Sea, where it explored the coral reefs off Eritrea, but most of its work has been in the eastern Mediterranean, an area that, because of its shallow tides, scientists believe can be an early indicator of changes in the marine environment across the globe.

"The changes that occur in the eastern Mediterranean, if the natural processes continue, will affect [every] ocean eventually," Mr. Mart explained. "Therefore the Mediterranean can serve as proxy to oceanographic changes that might take place because climate is changing."

The MedEx has been the platform for a series of expeditions on phytoplankton, the microscopic marine organisms that account for some 40 percent of the world's photosynthesis and are the basis of the marine food web. What happens to them when the climate or other aspects of the environment change is a matter of intense scientific interest.

Sven Beer, a professor in the department of plant sciences at Tel Aviv University, is the scientific director of EcoOcean. He uses the MedEx to classify thousands of species of phytoplankton by their DNA to see if they can be used to measure marine pollution.

Water samples are trapped using the 12 open-ended bottles, which can be winched down to depths of several hundred meters. Monitors in the onboard lab display the depth, salinity, light intensity, and concentration of phytoplankton inside the bottles, which can be individually sealed by remote control and brought onto the deck for analysis.

"We look at the DNA pattern, and we compare it in a gene bank to DNA patterns that have been made already for known species in laboratories all over the world," said Mr. Beer. "This is a biological indicator of pollution. Because the phytoplankton are the basis of the food web, the changes in the environment that change the phytoplankton composition are the ones that are important."

Mr. Beer is also tracking dinoflagellates, sometimes toxic organisms that, when they multiply or "bloom" in huge numbers, can poison sea creatures and, through them, human beings, in tropical and northern seas. His research aims to see whether those sea blooms are increased to dangerous levels by pollution.

The MedEx cannot do everything. Larger ships can pull up much longer cores from the ocean bottom and thus get information that goes further back in time. And the ship's seismic equipment is more limited than that on a larger vessel. "It can do small things, but what it does, it does well," Mr. Mart said.

One of those things, said Mr. Beer, is to change the face of marine research in the eastern Mediterranean.

"It's going to give us the opportunity to do important science that we couldn't do without this platform," he said. "We could not do this monitoring without having a ship where we can bring up water samples. It's an absolute must."

In Israel, the Messiah with More Than 30 'Wives'

By Matthew Kalman Monday, Jan. 18, 2010

Goel Ratzon arrives at a courthouse in Tel Aviv Yossi Zeliger / AFP / Getty

Goel Ratzon's Facebook profile shows the bespectacled Israeli with shoulder-length white hair and neatly trimmed beard and says he is currently dating and has 36 friends. His real status is somewhat more complicated. When Israeli police raided the self-styled healer's four homes in Tel Aviv last week they found two legal ex-wives, plus another 30 women as well as 89 children — all reputedly his. Ratzon was arrested on suspicion of enslavement, rape and sexual abuse and remanded in custody by a local magistrate.

Police described the apartment block in the city's downscale Hatikvah neighborhood as a slum harem. "The living conditions of the women were tragic," Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told TIME. "When I entered one of the houses, I was shocked by what I saw. The filth was horrible, and there was nowhere to walk without stumbling on something. It was a three-bedroom apartment, where 10 women and 17 children were living."

Ratzon's unusual domestic arrangements first came to light in a documentary broadcast on Israel's Channel 10 in January 2009. It showed Ratzon's "wives" cooking, cleaning and shopping together, eagerly anticipating the arrival of "Daddy" and competing over whom he would choose to spend the night with. On the show, Ratzon explained the secret of his magnetic attraction was that he was "perfect." "I have everything a woman wants, all the qualities a woman wants. I give women the attention they want. It's made of many things, but fortunately, I have everything," he said. Because there was technically no multiple marriage (no ceremonies or documents were involved), authorities had no basis for charging Ratzon with polygamy.

The women, too, appeared to be content, if not happy. They wore modest clothing that neighbors likened to those of religious Muslims, and they had Ratzon's image tattooed on their bodies. The children's names all included a version of Ratzon's own. One wife had Ratzon's portrait tattooed on her upper left arm, his head surrounded by snakes with the legend "Goel Ratzon, my love forever." A similar tattoo on her upper right arm portrayed him with a cobra crowning his head and the legend "My Goel, my love." Her neck was inscribed twice: "To Goel, with love."

"No one has love like we have here. I went through a lot before I arrived here and he is the ultimate for me," she explained on television. One of the other women defended Ratzon's little kingdom, saying, "People think we are in a place where we are imprisoned and forced to become some kind of poor Cinderella. They don't understand that there is humanity, respect. He has something special and good." Said one of her companions: "He's the Messiah that everyone talks about. The day he decides to reveal himself, this country will see it."

Ratzon had built a reputation for spiritual redemption (which is what goel means in Hebrew) by way of a center in Tel Aviv that combined teachings on the Kabbalah with healing. In 2000, he told a reporter that he had had a vision of a "soul" appearing to him and telling him that the secrets of the Torah would be revealed to him, allowing him to no longer work hard in his life. He became known as a healer for young women, some of whom fell in love with him. One of his "wives" said she was smitten after he cured her of a mysterious disease that had left her bald at age 10. Some of the women in the household severed all contact with their own families, insisting no one forced them to stay. On the TV documentary, some accompanied Ratzon to a Tel Aviv mall to trawl for more "wives."

Still, Ratzon, 59, ruled his clan like a kingdom — or a police state. According to a book of domestic bylaws that he laid out for his huge household, the women faced fines from $50 to $500 for such infractions as sitting idle when there was housework to be done or talking to repairmen. To an extent, the situation was state-subsidized: some women claimed state benefits as stay-at-home, single parents. Others, however, worked outside, earning money for the family kitty. But not everyone was happy. Days before his arrest, Ratzon reportedly took one of his "wives" to the hospital because she was suffering from an overdose of antidepressants.

Because there was no evidence of a crime, just a weird lifestyle, no charges have been brought against Ratzon. "The welfare department [had] been in touch with some of the women and children for the past couple of years," Sharon Melamed, a social worker in the Tel Aviv Municipality Welfare Department tells TIME. "There was never a reason to suspect any criminal behavior. The children were clean and well dressed. They showed up to school regularly. There were no signs in their behavior that could indicate neglect or anything like sexual exploitation."

But there was much suspicion that many of the women in the alleged harem, still in their 20s, had been troubled teenagers who originally went to Ratzon for therapy. In June of 2009, a 24-year-old woman, the daughter of one of Ratzon's "wives," filed a complaint against him with the Tel Aviv police. The mother, who was arrested along with Ratzon, is suspected of introducing her biological daughter, then 14, to the healer for purposes of sex; she is now facing charges of encouraging and failing to report underage sex. Using Clause 375a of a new Israeli law against human-trafficking that makes it a crime to hold a person "in conditions of slavery," police then tapped Ratzon's phones and began surveillance. Parallel to the police investigation, parents of some of the young women hired private detectives to launch an undercover inquiry.

If formally charged, Ratzon faces a maximum 16-year prison term for each of the slavery and rape charges. Through his lawyer, Ratzon denied the allegations. After so many years of inaction, the police seem confident they can prove his guilt. "We have managed to gather a great deal of evidence relating to the offenses of holding people under conditions of enslavement and rape," deputy commander Shlomi Michael, head of the Tel Aviv police's Central Unit, told reporters.

— With reporting by Yonit Farago / Tel Aviv

ISRAEL: ECO-REVOLUTION IN THE DESERT

It grows food in sand, powers homes with the sun and this year launches the world's first city-wide electric car system. So how has war-torn Israel become such an eco-pioneer?

DAILY EXPRESS
Tuesday, January 19, 2010

By Matthew Kalman

BY THE end of this year the world’s first all-electric car network will be up and running in one of the most unlikely settings. The cars built by Renault-Nissan need a network of re-charging points and battery changing stations and these are being set up in Denmark, Hawaii, California, Canada and Australia.

But the first place to host a national electric car network will be one that has almost permanently been at war with its neighbours since its inception. This is Israel, which invented the original technology and is home to Better Place, the company that came up with the idea.

“Israel will be the fi rst country in the world with this new technology. Jerusalem will be the fi rst city,” says Better Place boss Shai Agassi, who recently unveiled Israel’s first car charging points. The car looks like a regular Renault Megane except it has no exhaust pipe and an electric socket where the petrol cap should be. It drives noticeably quieter than a regular car and powered by a 450lb lithium-ion battery it can run for about 140 miles without re-charging, compared with 300 miles for the average family car on a full tank of petrol.

Drivers will plug in their cars to recharge for several hours at home, work or at designated free car parks throughout the country. Or they will swap empty batteries for fully-charged ones at a network of up to 200 “swap stations” throughout Israel. The electricity for the cars will come from solar technology being developed in the desert in southern Israel. Amid the gunfire this tiny country the size of Wales and with a population of just under 7.5million leads the world in developing and exporting green technologies that could save the planet.

Ironically it is precisely because of its precarious position that such eco-inventions have flourished. Surrounded by hostile neighbours, with few natural resources of its own and two-thirds of its area inhos pitable desert, Israel has had to use its wits to survive. When Warren Buffett, the world’s wealthiest man, decided to make his first investment outside the United States, he chose Israel. “Some Amerircans have come to the Middle East looking for oil so they didn’t stop in Israel. We came to the Middle East looking for brains and we stopped in Israel,” Buffett explained as he put $4billion into Iscar, a precision tool maker.

“We found that the real trick in business is not to be a genius yourself but to go around associating with geniuses who are already doing a good job and stay out of their way.” Israeli innovations range from Intel microprocessors to messaging systems that ensure the safety of nearly all the world’s financial transactions. Micro soft Intel, IBM and NDS, a firm that designs TV set-top boxes to unscramble cable and satellite signals, all have research and development centres in Israel drawing on the brainpower of those “genius”.

There are more than 1,000 clean-technology start-up companies in Israel, a country that has attracted more foreign investment in high-tech businesses in the past decade than all of Europe. It has more companies quoted on the high-tech NASDAQ stock exchange in New York than any other country outside the United States. In innovation it outshines all its neighbours. Between 1980 and 2000 Egyptians registered 77 patents in the US. Saudis registered 171. Israelis registered 7,652.

“We are flexible and we are smart because we know that we have to be to survive,” says Shraga Brosh, chairman of the Israeli Manufacturers’ Association. A primary motor of this technical innovation is the Israeli army. Its units cream off the top teenagers, ram them through accelerated university training and give them sophisticated military assignments. Agassi of Better Place, like the founders of computer security pioneers Check-point, demobbed from Unit 8200, a top-secret division of military intelligence where every other soldier is a computer whiz-kid.

TALPIOT, another military programme veiled in secrecy, whips its high-achieving teenagers through electronics, engineering or physics degrees before setting them up in state-of-the-art laboratories to build next-generation defence solutions. “The ingenuity in technology is tremendous. Israel is a fountain of knowledge,” says Avishay Braverman, an Israeli cabinet minister and former World Bank economist.

“The reason for the success in high-tech industry is that the army invested so much in research. Where else do you have men and women operating the most sophisticated computers in the world at such a young age?” The ingenuity and training is mixed with a need to solve Israel’s problems due to its geography and political isolation. Its main water sources are controlled by its enemies Syria and the Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The land is sandy and infertile. “Israel has become a world power in terms of green technology because of our long experience in dealing with scarcity,” says Jon Medved, head of the pioneering video ringtone company Vringo and an investor in Israeli clean technology companies. “ We’ve created these technologies to solve problems that are acute here.”

Israel and experts such as Dov Pasternak lead the world in countering the creeping desertifi cation that has made large swathes of Africa and Asia uninhabitable. Satellite photographs show that only two countries have increased the area of land covered by forest and agriculture – the United States and Israel. Israeli farmers revolutionised the watering of agricultural crops more than 40 years ago through the drip irrigation system which has since been adopted worldwide.

Water is carried directly to the roots of the plant through tiny holes in small tubes that can be easily redeployed according to need. The system is set on a timer, reducing evaporation and eliminating run-off. Because the water is delivered direct to the roots of the crop there is less moisture on the leaves and surrounding soil, suppressing mould and weeds. That reduces the need for chemicals and pesticides.

Netafim, which markets the technology, says it is now used in more than 110 countries and has helped create self-sustaining agricultural communities in drought-stricken areas, particularly in Africa. Israel now recycles 70 per cent of its waste water – a huge amount that puts it way ahead of any other country. The water is used for agriculture, waste management and for fi sh farms in the desert.

Israel is also a pioneer in geothermal and solar energy. The world’s leading company in geothermal power – harnessing Earth’s heat to generate electricity – is Ormat, an Israeli company. For decades visitors to Israel have been struck by the solar heating panels and water tanks on the top of almost every building. These provide solar-heated water to just about every home and business.

Now Israel is leading the way in a new technology that harnesses solar power for clean electricity production. One company, Solel, was snapped up by the German industrial giant Siemens last year for more than $400million. It is competing with Brightsource, another Israeli company, for contracts to supply more than two million homes in California with electricity produced without any fossil fuels.

But Israeli ingenuity in electricity is not limited to the sun. Innowattech is developing a system to generate electricity from the pressure of traffic driving along roads. Piezo-electric generators are installed inches beneath the upper layer of asphalt and convert the mechanical energy of traffic passing over them into electrical energy.

INNOWATTECH estimates that its generators placed along a half-mile stretch of a four-lane motorway would produce about 1MWh of electricity – enough to power 2,500 households. It is testing prototypes for roads, railways, pedestrian walkways and airport runways – all of which could generate completely clean electricity.

Before too long it will be possible to drive an electric car powered by a battery whose electricity was generated by the sun or by other cars driving across sub-surface generator, and whose engine is cooled by recycled water.

But only in Israel.

Burial cloth found in Jerusalem cave casts doubt on authenticity of Turin Shroud

DAILY MAIL 16th December 2009
By Matthew Kalman

Archaeologists have discovered the first known burial shroud in Jerusalem from the time of Christ's crucifixion - and say it casts serious doubt on the claimed authenticity of the Turin Shroud.

Ancient shrouds from the period have been found before in the Holy Land, but never in Jerusalem.

Researchers say the weave and design of the shroud discovered in a burial cave near Jerusalem's Old City are completely different to the Turin Shroud.

Discovery: The shrouded body of a man was found in this sealed chamber of a cave in the Hinnom Valley, overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem

Radiocarbon tests and artefacts found in the cave prove almost beyond doubt that it was from the same time of Christ's death.

It was made with a simple two-way weave - not the twill weave used on the Turin Shroud, which textile experts say was introduced more than 1,000 years after Christ lived.

And instead of being a single sheet like the famous item in Turin, the Jerusalem shroud is made up of several sections, with a separate piece for the head.

Professor Shimon Gibson, the archaeologist who discovered the tomb, said ancient writings and contemporary shrouds from other areas had suggested this design, and the Jerusalem shroud finally provided the physical evidence.

The debate over the Turin Shroud will not go away. Last month a Vatican researcher said she had found the words 'Jesus Nazarene' on the shroud, proving it was the linen cloth which was wrapped around Christ's body.

Tests: DNA analysis of the fibres of the Jerusalem shroud, left, have revealed it dates back to the time of Christ's death. Experts say it casts doubt on the authenticity of the Turin Shroud, right

Barbara Frale said computer analysis of photographs of the shroud revealed extremely faint words written in Greek, Aramaic and Latin which attested to its authenticity.

But the shroud-wrapped body dated to the time of Christ discovered in Jerusalem seems to point in the opposite direction.

The shroud was found around the remains of a man in a sealed chamber of a burial cave in the Hinnom Valley overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem by archaeologists from the Hebrew University and the Albright Research Institute, both in Jerusalem.

DNA tests indicated the man had suffered from leprosy and died of tuberculosis.

That was probably why his burial cave was sealed - a move that preserved the shroud and even some of the man's hair for 2,000 years.

The Turin Shroud, which measures 14ft by 3ft, is unlike the burial practice of the time which used separate sheets for the head and body of the deceased

Find: The new shroud was discovered in a sealed cave in the Hinnom Valley near Jerusalem's Old City

Professor Gibson said the Turin Shroud did not fit what was known of burial practices in first-century Palestine - now confirmed by the Jerusalem shroud.

'The Turin shroud is a single sheet made with a twill weave.

'The twill weave is known from this part of the world only from the mediaeval period, so we're talking about something that's from the Middle Ages,' Gibson told the Daily Mail.

'But the Jerusalem shroud confirmed another local practice which casts even more doubt on the Turin artefact.

'It wasn't one continuous sheet,' said Gibson, pointing out the Turin Shroud is a single rectangular sheet measuring about 14ft by 3ft.

'What our shroud shows is that the practice of having a separate shroud or wrapping for the body and for the head was common practice.

'There was a separate wrapping for the head itself, which was very important because when they brought someone to burial they would place the head wrapping separately on the face in case the person wasn't actually dead and woke up again, they would be able to blow off the face wrapping and shout for help,' said Gibson.

Evidence: Archaeologist Shimon Gibson, centre, said tests had revealed the man suffered from leprosy and died from tuberculosis

'This did occur quite a lot in antiquity because they didn't have the medical means we have today.

'The idea was that if you enshrouded somebody, you had a separate set of wrappings for the body and a separate set of wrappings for the head,' he said.

Ancient rabbinical writings mention people who woke up, apparently miraculously and lived for years afterwards.

It was the custom at the time for the family to visit the tomb after three days to check their relative was indeed dead.

Gibson said this was probably the source of the Gospel story about Jesus's followers visiting his tomb three days after the Crucifixion, when they found it empty.

Historic: A diagram of where the body was found in the burial chamber. The chamber may have been sealed because he suffered from tuberculosis

The Hinnom Valley where the Jerusalem shroud was discovered has long been associated with death. The Gospel of Matthew calls it Akeldama or 'Field of Blood.'

It is dotted with Roman-era burial tombs carved out of caves in the rock face.

In ancient times, pagan tribes burned children alive there as offerings to the god Moloch.

The ancient Israelites called the valley Gehinnom - the Hebrew for 'Hell' - and it was the site where the scapegoat was driven over a cliff on the Day of Atonement in Solomon's Temple.

Diplomatic furore as Israel accuses Britain of issuing arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni after she defended Gaza War

DAILY MAIL 15th December 2009

By Matthew Kalman

Row: Tzipi Livni arrives at 10 Downing Street on a previous trip to London in 2008

Israel has reacted with fury to the arrest warrant for alleged war crimes issued against Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni by a London magistrate on Saturday, accusing the British Government of breaking an undertaking to stop pro-Palestinian activists from using the British courts to pursue Israeli politicians and generals.

In a sharply-worded statement, the Israeli foreign ministry said Britain should 'fulfill its promises to stop anti-Israel exploitation of the British courts' or risk losing its role in Middle East peacemaking.

'Promises were given by the British at the very highest level that they would solve the problem,' Israeli government officials told the Daily Mail.

'David Miliband promised on many occasions that the government would introduce legislation that will end this absurdity,' Israeli deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon said.

'Until such legislation is possible, I hope there will be some expeditious measures, whether they are technical or interim, that will extricate all of us from this very awkward situation.

'During my last trip to London I met my opposite number Ivan Lewis, the minister of state at the Foreign Office, who promised me that everything would be done to close this loophole in British law that allows any local judge in the middle of nowhere to issue arrest warrants like these,' he said.

Israeli officials said similar assurances were given last August during talks in London between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Gordon Brown.

'Their response was: "Of course you're right, it has to be changed." And they gave us the impression that it would be,' an Israeli government official told the Mail.

The warrant against Livni was withdrawn, but not before she had cancelled a planned trip to address a conference in London this week. Livni was Israel’s foreign minister during last year’s war in Gaza, where both Israelis and Palestinians have been accused of war crimes.

Firm friends: Prime Minister Gordon Brown with Tzipi Livini during a visit to Israel and Palestine in 2008

Several senior Israeli officials have cancelled trips to London after pro-Palestinian activists secured arrest warrants from British judges. Doron Almog, an Israeli general in charge of operations in Gaza during the intifada uprising, was forced to remain on a plane on the tarmac at Heathrow in 2005 to evade possible arrest if he set foot on British soil.

Defence Minister and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak was also threatened with arrest when he came to meet Brown and address a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference in October.

Tony Blair, who is now the peace envoy of the Middle East Quartet, agreed that Israeli leaders should be allowed to enter and leave Britain without fear.

'My view has always been that members of the Israeli government and senior members of the Israeli military of course should be welcome in Britain and I’ve met them there and in Downing Street many times,' he said.

'Israel is a friend of the UK and the UK is a friend of Israel in my book and I very much hope that people can go to and from Israel with ease.'

Hanuka Candles - Yisrael Campbell onstage in "Circumcise Me"

Israeli High Court Rejects Appeal of Deported Palestinian Student

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDCUATION
December 9, 2009

By Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem

In a ruling that could affect thousands of other Palestinian students, Israel's High Court of Justice decided on Wednesday to uphold the deportation of a student from Bethlehem University to her family home in the Gaza Strip weeks before she was to complete her undergraduate degree.

Berlanty Azzam, 22, a fourth-year student in business administration and translation, was arrested, handcuffed, and blindfolded after a routine security check at a military roadblock near Bethlehem last month. She was forced across the Erez border crossing into Gaza at midnight despite an undertaking by another military unit to keep her in Israel pending an appeal.

A three-judge panel at the High Court headed by Justice Miriam Naor rejected her appeal against the deportation. The court accepted the army's argument that Ms. Azzam's original permit to leave Gaza in 2005 was valid for just five days and could not be used to remain in Bethlehem to study.

"We cannot ignore the fact that the petitioner stayed in the West Bank for four years without a proper permit," Judge Naor said in a three-page decision unanimously accepted by the other two judges.

Ms Azzam's lawyer, Yadin Elam, had argued that in 2005 no such permit was necessary because the army had not yet introduced its policy banning Gaza residents from studying in the West Bank.

"It is unfortunate that the court, which in its interim decision asked state officials to permit Berlanty to return to Bethlehem to complete her degree, refrained from ordering them to do so when they refused," said Mr. Elam. "I cannot imagine why the State of Israel is so insistent on preventing Palestinian young people, against whom it makes no security claims whatsoever, from accessing higher education."

Sari Bashi, director of Gisha, an Israeli human-rights group that assisted Ms. Azzam, said an estimated 25,000 Palestinians with Gaza ID cards are in the West Bank, including many students who are also at risk of being deported.

In 2007 the Israeli High Court instructed the army to reconsider its blanket ban on allowing students from Gaza to study in the West Bank and recommended that exceptions be granted in special cases.

"To the best of our knowledge, since this judgment was handed down, Israel has not issued a single permit to a student from Gaza," said Ms. Bashi.

Ms. Azzam told The Chronicle that the decision had undermined her belief that the Israelis really wanted to achieve peace with the Palestinians.

"I feel disappointed about their decision because they didn't have any reason to do this," she said. "I feel they are unjust and unfair in the way they treat us. I don't think they want peace. I believe in peace."

Brother Jack Curran, vice president for development at Bethlehem University, said he was "incredibly disappointed" and would try to make arrangements for Ms. Azzam to finish her degree by long-distance learning.

"It's very disconcerting for any student who might have Gaza ID and might still be in the West Bank," he said of the court decision. "They will stay close to their campuses, I imagine. I know in our university community that Israeli policies like these only achieve more confusion, more pain, and more distrust of desires to build a better future on both sides."

Bethlehem grocer sues Sacha Baron Cohen

THE JERUSALEM POST
Dec. 9, 2009

MATTHEW KALMAN
Special to The Jerusalem Post

Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's attempt to pretend that he interviewed a notorious terrorist leader in the film Bruno may cost him $110 million in damages - 80 percent of the movie's gross box office earnings.

That's the sum demanded by Ayman Abu Aita, a Palestinian grocer and peace activist from Bethlehem who says his life has been ruined by Baron Cohen's movie.

Abu Aita has filed a suit against Baron Cohen, US talk-show host David Letterman, Bruno director Larry Charles and NBC Universal Studios, demanding $110m. in libel damages.

In the film, Baron Cohen's gay character claims to travel to a refugee camp in Lebanon to meet a leader of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, and tries to provoke his host into kidnapping him before a translator has Abu Aita saying, "Get out!"

In the movie, a caption describes Abu Aita as "Terrorist group leader, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade."

In an interview on The Late Show with David Letterman last July, Baron Cohen said his production team had found this "real terrorist" through a CIA contact, and he had taken extra security to the "secret location" because of the threat to his personal safety.

"What could people see that they've never seen before on film?" Baron Cohen told Letterman. "We thought one thing would be a comedian interviewing a terrorist.

"We called up a contact we had at the CIA and said, 'Can you help us? We're looking to find a terrorist.' After a few months, we found somebody who actually lived in a town that had a terrorist from a pretty nasty group called the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, who are kind of the No. 1 suicide bombers out there… The guy picks a secret location."

In fact, the scene was filmed at the Everest Hotel - a well-known tourist spot in Beit Jala, on the outskirts of Bethlehem in the West Bank, in an area under Israeli control and right next to an army base. There was no need for bodyguards.

"At no time was Cohen in any danger," says Abu Aita. "Nor was the interview at a 'secret location.' In fact, the interview took place at a spot selected by Cohen - the Everest Hotel - which, although located in the West Bank, is in an area designated by the Israeli military as 'Zone C,' which is under full Israeli military control."

Abu Aita is a well-known peace activist who lives in the Bethlehem suburb of Beit Sahur - and contrary to the translation, he never says "Get out!" in the film. He claims he was tricked into meeting Baron Cohen, thinking he was a German filmmaker producing a film about the Palestinian cause.

More seriously, he says he is a firm opponent of the terrorists, and the depiction in Bruno is a harmful slur against his character.

In the libel suit, filed last Wednesday in federal court in Washington, Abu Aita describes the Aksa Martyrs Brigades as "a notorious terrorist group, culpable in the wanton slaughter of dozens of innocent people and in the targeted assassination of many others."

The father of four, who is a Greek Orthodox Christian and Treasurer of the Holy Land Trust - a peace charity that promotes reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians - says he has received death threats and suffered from depression and anxiety since the movie's release and Baron Cohen's interview on Letterman's talk show. Abu Aita says he now fears for the well-being of his wife and family, both in the West Bank and in the US.

Abu Aita was imprisoned by Israel, but never found guilty of any offense. He says he is "a peace-loving person who abhors violence" and a regular visitor to the United States - something that would be impossible if he were on a terrorist watch list.

Sasha Baron Cohen facing a multi-million pound lawsuit over his film Bruno

DAILY MAIL
7th December 2009

By MATTHEW KALMAN

Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is being sued for £70million in libel damages over his film Bruno.

Ayman Abu Aita, a Palestinian grocer and peace activist from Bethlehem, says the depiction of him in the movie has ruined his life.

In Bruno, Cohen's gay character claims to travel to the Ein El-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon to meet a leader of the Al-Aqsa Brigades. A caption describes Abu Aita as 'Terrorist group leader, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade'.

Libel: Sasha Baron Cohen, pictured here with fiancee, actress Isla Fisher, is being sued for £70m over his film Bruno

In fact, the scene was filmed at a well-known hotel on the outskirts of Bethlehem in the West Bank in an area under Israeli control, next to an Israeli army base.

On American TV last July Cohen told talkshow host Letterman his production team found this 'real terrorist' through a CIA contact.

Abu Aita has filed a suit against Cohen, NBC Universal Studios and Letterman demanding £70 million - equal to half the movie's gross box office takings.

The father of four says says he has since received death threats, he is a firm opponent of terrorists, and that he was tricked into meeting Cohen, thinking he was a German producing a film about the Palestinian cause.

Sasha Baron Cohen in character as the gay Austrian TV presenter Bruno

US Documentary Channel Premiere

US TV Premiere of CIRCUMCISE ME: THE COMEDY OF YISRAEL CAMPBELL on Monday, December 7 at 10.30PM ET

Israel Frees Palestinian Professor After 20 Months Without Trial

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
November 30, 2009

By Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem

A Palestinian law professor just released by Israel after being held for 20 months without trial in administrative detention has told The Chronicle that he intends to go straight back to teaching and continue promoting a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ghassan Khaled, 40, a lecturer in commercial law at An-Najah University, in the West Bank city of Nablus, was arrested in January 2008, was held and interrogated using extreme methods that he says amounted to "torture" before being released, and then was rearrested in March 2008.

He was released last Thursday night, on the eve of the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice Eid Al-Adha, and spent the holiday resting with his wife and five children at his parent's home in the village of Jayyous.

Mr. Khaled said he would resume lecturing at An-Najah on Wednesday and thanked his many Israeli friends who had come to court to argue against his imprisonment and offer guarantees for his release — without success.

"Me and my father and all of our family, we have a lot of Israeli friends," Mr. Khaled said in an interview. "They came to court to support me, and they told the judge, 'We know him, we know his father, we are ready to give any guarantee that at any time they will not do anything illegal.'"

He said he had never been told the reason for his detention because his was a "secret file" that neither he nor his lawyer was allowed to see. He was held for four months at Megiddo Prison, in northern Israel, before being transferred to the Ketziot prison camp, in southern Israel, where inmates sleep in tents of 20 men, in walled sections containing six tents, six showers, and exercise space.

"I kept telling the judge that I'm a lawyer, and according to the Geneva Convention I have the right to know why I am arrested," he said. "I told them that according to the Geneva Convention, administrative detention is considered as a war crime because I have the right to know why I am arrested. I have the right to defend myself."

Article 78 of the Fourth Geneva Convention says a conquering army has the right to hold in administrative detention people who pose a threat to the security of the region, but critics say the Israeli authorities' use of the measure far exceeds its original purpose.

In response to an inquiry last month from The Chronicle, the Israeli army denied that Mr. Khaled was in administrative detention.

Mr. Khaled said that during his initial interrogation, in January 2008, he was tied to a chair for up to 22 hours a day and deprived of sleep for more than a week, causing severe swelling in a knee. He said an Israeli judge had ordered immediate treatment, but by the time the prison authorities allowed him to see a doctor, there was no longer any evidence that the problem had been caused by his ill treatment during the interrogation.

Despite his bitter experience, Mr. Khaled said he was more persuaded than ever to continue his work to promote peace and dialogue.

"Not only do I feel that I can continue — now I think that it's more necessary," he said. "I'm thinking that it's true even more than in the past because we have very serious work to convince others that violence is not useful for us, and it's not helpful for us, and through dialogue and through negotiation we can resolve all our problems."

"There are a lot of Israeli people who are peaceful people. They support peace," he continued. "That's why I will use all of my ability, all of my power, to convince others about how we can resolve our problems according to international humanitarian law, to convince others that fanaticism or fundamentalism or extremism is not useful for us and is not useful for anyone."

In His Cave, a Palestinian Farmer Makes a Stand

Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2009

By MATTHEW KALMAN / WALLAJEH

Abed Abed-Rabbo doesn't want to live in a cave, but it's the only way he can stay on his farm. The Palestinian farmer, 48, inherited the property in the village of Wallajeh, on the southern edge of Jerusalem, from his father and his grandfather but had to flee amid the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel occupied the place. In 1999, he returned to Wallajeh and the farm, risking constant arrest and defying an Israeli decision to annex it to Jerusalem. Most nights of the week, he says, he spends in the cave he slept in as a child. But now, he may even lose the cave.

The planning committee of the Jerusalem Municipality last week approved the expansion of Gilo, an Israeli suburb that straddles the pre-1967 West Bank border. The decision threatens to cover the green valley that includes Wallajeh with a new housing development. That would destroy Abed-Rabbo's dream of returning to his farm full of olive trees overlooking the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo and most likely deprive him of his patrimony forever. "I am one small man," Abed-Rabbo tells TIME. "All I want is to live on my land in peace."

The decision to expand dismayed the Obama Administration. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "At a time when we are working to relaunch negotiations [between Israelis and Palestinians], these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed. Neither party should engage in efforts or take actions that could unilaterally pre-empt, or appear to pre-empt, negotiations." The Palestinians and the United States say the status of Wallajeh and the rest of East Jerusalem should be held open pending negotiations on a final peace deal.

What is called Plan No. 13157 includes a private development known as Givat Yael that will cover Wallajeh's fields with Israeli homes for more than 40,000 people. Israeli planners arrived on Abed-Rabbo's land recently and began taking measurements for the new development. The 450-mile-long Israeli security barrier that is planned to run through the area will permanently cut off Abed-Rabbo and his fellow villagers from their fields.

Sarah Kreimer, associate director of Ir Amim, a left-wing Israeli pressure group, says that Plan No. 13157 will complete a chain of development projects designed to prevent any possibility that a Palestinian state gains a toehold in the southern part of East Jerusalem bordering Bethlehem. There are a lot of large projects that are now moving through the planning process, Kreimer tells TIME. "They create an urban wedge between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. It closes off the option of any kind of negotiations on the whole southern border."

On the same day the municipality approved Plan No. 13157 and opened it for public discussion and debate, Abed-Rabbo was arrested by Israeli police and held until late in the evening. It was his seventh arrest in recent months. Israeli officials explained that in visiting the property, Abed-Rabbo had crossed the Israeli municipal boundary and entered Jerusalem illegally from his legal residence in the refugee camp of Dehaishe, deeper in the West Bank. (There is no checkpoint blocking off the farm from Dehaishe; the Israelis recently granted Abed-Rabbo a permit to visit his land, a permit that has since expired.)

By Wednesday evening, Abed-Rabbo was back in the cave, playing host to dozens of Israeli and Palestinian friends who arrived to celebrate his release. "Many, many Israelis come, and Europeans and many Palestinians," Abed-Rabbo tells TIME. "Here we have meetings of love, of peace, for a new way. We don't just need to talk about peace on television. We also need to sit with people, to get to know them, my kids, their kids, to bring them so they can play with each other. That's what love is. You bring people together. That's how you make peace."

Hebrew U. Urged to End Deal With Disney Over 'Baby Einstein' Videos

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
November 23, 2009

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which houses the Albert Einstein archive and owns the rights to his image, is being urged not to renew its $2.66-million contract with the Walt Disney Company's Baby Einstein series when it comes up for renewal, in 2010, according to Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, an American group of educators, health experts, and parents, says the Baby Einstein series and other videos for toddlers are actually harmful. "Parents believe baby media is educational, an impression that was fostered by Baby Einstein's marketing," said Nancy-Carlsson-Paige, a professor of education at Lesley University, in Massachusetts. In 2003 the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that children under two years of age not watch television.

Israeli Army Grants Hearing to Palestinian Student, but Only After Deporting Her

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
November 17, 2009

Berlanty Azzam, the 21-year-old Palestinian student summarily deported last month from Bethlehem University to her family home in Gaza by the Israeli army, was finally given a military hearing today to plead her case to stay two more months in Bethlehem in order to finish her degree -- a hearing that she should have been afforded three weeks ago. The Israeli army, which deviated from procedures set down by Israeli courts when it deported her blindfolded and handcuffed, gave Ms. Azzam a one-hour hearing in a disused office at the Erez crossing terminal building. The army maintained its refusal to allow Ms. Azzam even the minimal rights usually afforded to Palestinian suspects, and initially refused to allow Ms. Azzam to meet with her lawyer. The army is required to reply by Sunday to Ms. Azzam's petition to the Israeli Supreme Court to stay in Bethlehem.

Zionist Group in Israel Urges Students to Report 'Subversive' Professors

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
November 16, 2009

By Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem

Left-right tensions are rising on Israeli campuses over the complex legacy of Zionist ideology and the place of Zionism in Israeli society, with a call for students at one university to report on "Thought Police" professors, a campaign that is being likened to "McCarthyite" tactics in the United States.

The tensions pit radical academics, who are being accused of pursuing a political agenda and silencing pro-Zionist views, against Zionist groups, accused of a "witchhunt" against professors who reject the mainstream Israeli narrative.

Things came to a head at University of Haifa with the publication this fall of an advertisement in the new student calendar by IsraCampus, a watchdog modeled on Campus Watch in the United States.

Under the heading "Warning! Academic Fifth Column!," students are alerted to "professors and lecturers in Israeli universities and colleges who are involved in subversive activities." The ad alleges that the professors "openly support terrorist attacks against Jews, initiate an international boycott of Israel, make use of their status in the classroom for anti-Israeli incitement and anti-Zionist brainwashing, collaborate with known anti-Semites, denounce Israel as a fascist-colonialist state and an apartheid regime."

Meanwhile, a campus poster published by Im Tirzu — a movement seeking to reinvigorate Zionism — invites students to call a special hotline to "Stop the Thought Police in Academia" by reporting anti-Zionist lecturers or syllabi.

David Newman, a professor of political science at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beersheba, called the naming campaigns "McCarthyite."

An internal memorandum written recently by the head of the department of curriculum and instruction at Tel Aviv University said some students feared that left-wing lecturers might penalize them for their political opinions.

"There are no small number of students of lecturers with left-wing views who complain bitterly that they are extremely offended by the presentation of materials that oppose their views, but are fearful of expressing contrary viewpoints in class, lest it harm their grades," wrote the official, Nira Hativa.

Israeli universities have always been proud of hosting a robust debate in a society that perceives itself as constantly under threat of war and terrorism, but recent moves by a small group of academics to advocate an international boycott of Israeli universities have sparked an angry backlash.

"There's a group of Israeli professors who are misusing the classroom for political indoctrination," said Steven Plaut, an associate professor of business administration at Haifa, who paid for the IsraCampus advertisement. "They are using their positions within Israeli academia to basically promote an anti-Israel political agenda. Other people have the right to know what they're doing."

But Menachem Klein, a political-science professor at the right-leaning Bar-Ilan University who feels his left-wing views are stifled there, said those who categorized professors according to their political views do not understand the purpose of academic life.

"Academic research cannot be measured according to loyalty to a policy or to nationalism," said Mr. Klein. "The question is not whether I am a good Israeli scholar but whether I am a good scholar, period. I feel that Israeli academia is losing its universal humanistic base because of what's going on in general society and the conflict with Palestinians."

Lecturing Aboard the 9:04 to Tel Aviv, Israel's Train of Thought

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
November 15, 2009

Jonathan Nackstrand, AFP, Getty Images

Israeli rail commuters get a lecture about Einstein's love letters from Hanoch Gutfreund, a professor emeritus of physics at Hebrew U. of Jerusalem.

By Matthew Kalman

Albert Einstein, who explained his theory of relativity using the metaphor of a sealed railway carriage, probably did not foresee the day when professors would turn a commuter train into a lecture hall to convey his ideas.

But this month, Israeli commuters on the 9:04 from Platform Four at Modiin Central to Tel Aviv were treated to an academic lecture on Einstein's love letters to his two wives and various mistresses. It was the first in a series of railway lectures titled Scientists on Trains.

Hanoch Gutfreund, a professor emeritus of physics and a former president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, donned a microphone headset and stood in the aisle as he delivered his half-hour lecture.

He warned that love letters like Einstein's, which are stored at the Jewish National and University Library on the campus, are dying out in the age of Twitter and text messaging.

Half of Mr. Gutfreunds listeners had their backs to him, but he took that in stride, along with interruptions from the ticket collector and stops at intermediate stations.

Hebrew University started the lectures in an effort to shed its ivory-tower image as Israeli institutions struggle to convince the public that they urgently need more government support.

Its always a pleasure to find a very responsive and attentive audience, and I was surprised to find it in a passenger car on a train, Mr. Gutfreund said afterward. Einstein himself used the metaphor of trains, and next time I have a chance to do it, I will give a whole lecture about that.

One woman asked how long it would take her to get a degree based only on train lectures. Mr. Gutfreunds response was worthy of Einstein himself: It depends on how fast the train is going.

Detentions Leave Palestinian Students in Limbo

David Blumenfeld for The Chronicle

The Ofer military base, near Ramallah, where Ashraf Abuiram, a student at Birzeit U., says he was interrogated. There are 85 Birzeit students still sitting in Israeli jails.

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
November 8, 2009

By Matthew Kalman
Birzeit, West Bank

Ashraf Abuiram should have graduated from college long ago, but his life took an unexpected turn.

In late 2005, when he was a second-year student pursuing a degree in sociology at Birzeit University, 20 jeeps carrying 100 Israeli soldiers showed up at his home in the dead of night. He was arrested, detained without a trial, and spent a year in a prison camp in the south of Israel before being released and allowed to return to college.

Mr. Abuiram was suspected of aiding terrorist organizations but never charged with any crime. His story is not an uncommon one.

Anan Quzmar, director of the Right to Education Campaign at Birzeit U., tries to keep updated on the cycle of arrests and releases. Former prisoners "are weakened on the inside," he says. "I can see them defeated."

David Blumenfeld for The Chronicle

Anan Quzmar, director of the Right to Education Campaign at Birzeit U., tries to keep updated on the cycle of arrests and releases. Former prisoners "are weakened on the inside," he says. "I can see them defeated."

Sahar Francis, director of Addameer Prisoners' Support and Human Rights Association, in Ramallah, says the broad use of administrative detention orders makes it nearly impossible for detainees to enjoy legal protection.

David Blumenfeld for The Chronicle

Sahar Francis, director of Addameer Prisoners' Support and Human Rights Association, in Ramallah, says the broad use of administrative detention orders makes it nearly impossible for detainees to enjoy legal protection.

David Blumenfeld for The Chronicle

Ashraf Abuiram, a Palestinian student who was detained by the Israelis for a year without trial, says that he has never engaged in terrorist activities but that his empathy for Palestinian militants has grown.

Interviews conducted by The Chronicle with students, former prisoners, activists, and faculty members at universities in the West Bank suggest that a number of Palestinian students have been held for long periods of time without trial and with no evidence provided that they committed any crime. A senior Israeli military prosecutor interviewed for this article adamantly rejects this argument, saying that all detainees are held based on solid evidence and are provided multiple reviews and protections during their imprisonment.

Palestinian-student involvement in terrorist activities has been well documented. Still, the continuous threat of arrest by Israeli security forces in the West Bank, who frequently detain Palestinian students and faculty members for questioning, has led some students to switch majors and has persuaded many students and professors to stay away from even the most innocent political involvement.

Mr. Abuiram is one of 411 Birzeit students who have been detained by Israeli security forces since the university began keeping detailed records in November 2003. Right now, 85 Birzeit students are sitting in Israeli jails. Of those, 44 have been convicted of various terrorism-related charges; 26 are awaiting trial; nine are in "administrative detention," which allows a local military commander to detain prisoners without trial; and six are undergoing interrogation following their arrests. The most recent arrest was on November 3.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Information, some 720 Palestinian students have been detained by Israel in the nine years since the outbreak of the second intifada, in September 2000. Birzeit appears to have been a particular target. Its students account for more than half of all student detentions, and its past three student-council heads were all arrested and held for months on end.

The Israeli Security Agency, more commonly known by its Hebrew initials, Shin Bet, says it has good reason to focus on students in its efforts to prevent Palestinian terrorism. Contrary to the perception of Palestinian suicide bombers as desperate refugees, a study of 87 attackers from 2000 to 2004, published by the U.S.-based research group Economists for Peace and Security, found that 38 percent were university students or graduates at the time of the attacks.

The Shin Bet also believes that students and universities provide the leadership-and-planning infrastructure for terrorist operations—most notably through the Hamas student organization Kutla al-Islamiya.

"Terrorist organizations perceive the universities in the territories and their students as an attractive target for spotting and recruiting of activists, since the students are intellectual, politically aware, motivated young people who possess leadership skills," says a 2009 Shin Bet report.

A Pattern of Involvement

Many of the Palestinian students arrested by the Israelis were clearly involved in murderous attacks. They include Ahlam Tamimi, a communications student from Ramallah sentenced to 16 life sentences for escorting a suicide bomber to a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem in August 2001. The bomber detonated a guitar case filled with explosives, killing 15 and injuring more than 100. Five weeks earlier, Ms. Tamimi had planted a bomb concealed in a can of beer at a Jerusalem supermarket.

At the height of the intifada, when An-Najah National University, another West Bank institution, produced eight suicide bombers in less than a year, the Hamas student society's Web site hailed them as "heroes," describing them as "leaders who spread the light with their blood and chart with their lives the annals of glory."

The Shin Bet says it has arrested at least 12 students since the start of 2009 who are actively engaged in terrorist activity.

But the students, activists, and faculty members who spoke to The Chronicle say that Israeli security forces regularly detain students and professors on the thinnest of evidence, and that administrative detention offers few rights for the accused.

Asked specific questions by The Chronicle about individual prisoners and cases, the Shin Bet refused to comment on most cases, and so it is impossible to corroborate the students' stories in detail. But the patterns of arrest and detention were reflected across more than a dozen interviews with students, faculty members, human-rights experts, and lawyers familiar with the issues.

Mr. Abuiram, the sociology student, says things started to go wrong about a year into college when fellow students who had been called in for questioning by Israeli intelligence told him they were being asked about his activities.

Feeling hunted, he transferred to a university in Jordan, but Israeli security personnel began to pull him aside for questioning as he traveled across the Allenby Bridge between Jordan and the West Bank. In April 2005, he says, he was summoned for a three-hour interrogation by someone identified to him only as Captain Dudu of the Shin Bet secret service at the Ofer military base near Ramallah.

After a few months, he decided to end his studies in Jordan and return to the West Bank. But in December 2005, hours after he had applied to reregister at Birzeit, Mr. Abuiram says Captain Dudu appeared at his family home at 3 in the morning on a freezing-cold night, accompanied by 20 army jeeps and more than 100 soldiers. The captain called his family out into the street, he says, arrested him, and sent him to a prison camp in southern Israel. He remained in administrative detention for one year.

Lingering Effects

From the moment of his arrest, Mr. Abuiram says, he was never questioned and never charged. He was taken to an Israeli military court several times to extend the detention order but was never allowed to see any evidence against him or to speak to his lawyer except in the court.

He was taken to the Ketziot prison camp in the far south of Israel, where he lived in a tent with 19 other prisoners. Their tent was one of six within a walled compound with six showers and exercise space. He was released exactly one year later, in December 2006, and warned that he was being closely monitored and should not resume his previous activities.

He still has no idea why he was arrested.

"I'm just a normal student at the university like everyone else," says Mr. Abuiram. His penetrating stare and prematurely graying close-cropped hair are the only possible clues to his harsh experiences as he talks in measured tones about interrogation, arrest, and detention. "I'm involved in a bit of political activity, not anything that's linked to anything outside the university, but student-union activity to try and achieve student demands from the university."

He flatly denies any involvement in terrorism or violence or membership in any group outside the university. During the single interrogation with Captain Dudu, he says, it became clear that the Israelis suspected he was involved with underground terrorist cells of the PFLP, the PLO group that assassinated the Israeli tourism minister Rechavam Zeevi in 2001.

Another Birzeit student, who asked that his name not be published, says he was snatched off the street by Israeli soldiers in January 2001 and held for 12 days at the Beit El military base north of Ramallah before being released in the pouring rain miles from his home.

The former engineering student says he had never been remotely involved in any militant activity, but in September 2003 he was arrested again and spent three months in the Ketziot prison camp. On his first night home, he was arrested again and taken to the Russian Compound—a security facility that houses Jerusalem's police headquarters and the Shin Bet interrogation center—for questioning.

There he was held in a tiny cell and interrogated for 18 hours at a time. After 70 days, he was allowed to see a lawyer for five minutes, and after 125 days he was moved to another prison in southern Israel where he was held for 20 months, until June 2006, when he was put on trial and sentenced to 28 months in jail for being "an active participant in the intifada."

He was returned to the Ketziot prison camp for three months and then to a jail near Nazareth for one month. He was finally released in January 2007.

The student said the only evidence provided at his trial was his one-time participation in a small demonstration near the university.

"They never found anything to accuse me of. There were no specific accusations that I even knew anyone involved in militant activity," he says.

"I have been at university for eight years now, while four classes have graduated including all my friends and contemporaries," he told The Chronicle. "Some teachers in the labs are now younger than me. All my dreams are about jail. I've never had a nice dream where I wake up happy."

Apart from the delay, the continued arrests persuaded him to drop his engineering courses.

"Electrical engineering was my dream and my hobby. I was top of my school in physics," he says. "But the Israeli interrogators in the Russian Compound said: 'Electrical engineering is dangerous for us. You will use the knowledge against us.' So I changed to media studies because I don't want to be arrested every year. I want them to change their view of me."

He was willing to speak about his experience, but only on the condition of anonymity. "I don't want the Israelis to notice me. I don't want to go back to prison."

Helpless and Defeated

Faculty members on West Bank campuses say they have seen dramatic changes take place among students who have been targets of questioning or arrests. Some, like the former engineering student, switch majors. Others avoid any group activities that could remotely be perceived as student activism.

Anan Quzmar, director of the Right to Education Campaign at Birzeit University, tries to keep updated on the cycle of arrests and releases. He says the effects are obvious on the campus.

"Ex-prisoners face difficulties. It decreases their academic performance, and after being in prison they find it hard to get back into a university atmosphere. All their friends have graduated. They are weakened on the inside. I can see them defeated."

"One of the main effects is this helplessness," agrees Saleh Abdel-Jawad, dean of the law faculty at Birzeit. He himself has been arrested three times, most recently in 1986 when he led a sit-down protest of staff members and students at an Israeli checkpoint near the university. He was upset because the checkpoint was delaying students for so long that he would often end up with only half his class.

"I was not affiliated at all to any political movement. But the last detention led me to take a decision that even if there is something, I do not have to be involved," he says.

Mr. Abdel-Jawad describes himself as "a nonviolent intellectual" and says he avoids doing anything that might get him arrested again. He avoids going to trouble spots even as an observer "because I am afraid that one way or another I will be caught by accident."

At An-Najah National University, in Nablus, Akram Daoud, dean of the law faculty, is still trying to understand the case of his star commercial-law lecturer, Ghassan Khaled, who was arrested in January 2008, held and interrogated for 20 days before being released, and then re-arrested in March 2008. Mr. Daoud says Mr. Khaled remains in administrative detention, although the Israeli army says they have no record of his being currently in detention.

"There are no charges. This was the first time he was arrested. He is religious. He is someone who prays and sometimes talks in the mosques, but he's not connected to any kind of political party," says Mr. Daoud. "They couldn't prove that he has any link with any political party—this is why they are going to put him in administrative detention, because they don't have any charges against him. This guy has very close connections to Israelis from the peace movement—they are coming daily to his house. He has many friends in Israel and among the Israeli people."

'Activism Is Illegal'

Sahar Francis, director of Addameer Prisoners' Support and Human Rights Association, in Ramallah, says the widespread use of administrative detention orders makes it almost impossible for detainees to enjoy legal protection. Addameer is campaigning on behalf of another Birzeit student, Arafat Daoud, a third-year sociology major who has been in administrative detention since 2006.

Contacted by The Chronicle, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces said in a written statement that Mr. Daoud is in administration detention "due to his involvement in military activity which endangers the security in the area." The spokesman noted that Mr. Daoud's case was due for review last week.

Administrative detention was an emergency measure introduced in 1945 under the British Mandate, the League of Nations government established in Palestine after World War I. The Israeli army, which continues to apply British Mandate law to the West Bank, updated the regulations through military orders issued in 1970 and 1988, allowing the local military commander to detain prisoners without trial, based on confidential intelligence from the Shin Bet, if the commander believes the prisoner poses a danger to the security of the state.

"For Israel, activism is illegal," says Ms. Francis. "They use administrative detention when the evidence comes from collaborators or agents. They have effectively criminalized all student activities."

Lt. Col. Maurice Hirsch, a senior Israeli military prosecutor, told The Chronicle that the lengthy detention of innocent Palestinians as described by these interviewees was "almost impossible in reality" because of a system of legal checks and balances and an appeals process that allowed access to judicial review all the way to Israel's high court.

"The legal basis for administrative detention in Judea and Samaria is Article 78 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which specifically states that a conquering army has the right to hold persons who pose a threat to the security of the region in administrative detention," says Mr. Hirsch.

He says the measure is used only "as a last resort" where exposing the evidence in open court would endanger sources, or where no crime has yet been committed but there is firm intelligence that a terrorist act is being planned.

He rejects accusations that the army is abusing its powers in order to intimidate Palestinians or punish them for nonviolent political activity.

"The very basic requirement before every administrative-detention order is handed down is that it can be proven by the evidence supplied by the security forces that this person poses an immediate and severe danger to the security of the region. It has no connection to that person's vocation and no connection to that person's political views in any way, shape, or form," he says.

Mr. Hirsch says Israeli procedures go far beyond the demands of international law, requiring each administrative-detention order to be reviewed every few months, when statistics show that military judges, military appeals judges, or the Israeli high court change or overturn the orders in nearly half the cases.

As for Mr. Abuiram, he is in his final year of study.

He dropped out several times after his release, and assiduously avoids anything that could be remotely construed as a political activity. But his empathy for Palestinian militants has only increased.

"I used to respect them before getting into prison because they are defending themselves," he says. "Even before getting to prison I could understand everything about them, even if they kill civilians. And you can write that. I can understand anything that the Palestinians did against the occupation."