Israeli protestors call for controls to stop migrants

Tensions are rising in Israel

SUNDAY EXPRESS
Sunday May 27,2012

By Matthew Kalman

ISRAELI leaders are under pressure to stem the flow of illegal immigrants from Africa after tensions between migrants and poor neighbourhoods of Tel Aviv erupted in violence.

One demonstration against the wave of immigration deteriorated into attacks on Africans in cars and on the street, with police arresting 17 Israelis.

Yair Lapid, a prominent commentator, labelled it a “pogrom”.

But Right-wing politicians called on the government to seal the border with Egypt and to start deporting those without refugee status.

Likud MP Miri Regev told protesters: “The infiltrators are a cancer in our society. We will not let them thwart our attempt to protect ourselves, our children, our women and our work places.

“We’ll protest every day until the last of the Sudanese infiltrators returns to his country.”

But Yael Weisbach, who volunteers in a south Tel Aviv soup kitchen for refugees, denounced the speeches as “incitement”. She added: “People are fed misinformation about the refugees. They are lovely people. I’ve never encountered an act of violence or sexual harassment on their part.

“The violent protest could have been taken out of a Holocaust movie. Hatred based on the colour of one’s skin. We are losing our values.”

The protests followed two high-profile incidents in the past month in which illegal migrants were arrested on suspicion of the rapes of young Israeli women. Even before the attacks, a kindergarten and an apartment which was used by migrants were firebombed.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has sanctioned a multi-million-pound boundary fence with Egypt to slow the illegal traffic, said: “The problem of the infiltrators must be solved and we will solve it. If we don’t, 60,000 infiltrators are liable to become 600,000 and cause the negation of the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

“However, there is no place for either the expressions or the actions that we witnessed.”

President Shimon Peres said “hatred of foreigners contradicts the foundations of Judaism”.

More than 60,000 migrants have entered Israel from Egypt in recent years.

Many have settled in a run-down neighbourhood of south Tel Aviv, which locals say has transformed the area.

Court says 'not guilty,' Antiquities Authority demands punishment

Antiquities Authority determined not to return dozens of items to Israeli collector accused of faking burial box of Jesus's brother.

By MATTHEW KALMAN

JERUSALEM POST
May 12, 2012

 
(Reuters)
The Antiquities Authority, backed by State Attorney Moshe Lador, has launched a desperate rearguard action to reverse its humiliating defeat in a seven-year trial that ended with the acquittal of an Israeli collector accused of faking the burial box of the brother of Jesus and an inscribed stone tablet that may have hung on the wall of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.

The latest twist came during a routine sentencing hearing at the Jerusalem District Court last Tuesday, two months after the stunning collapse of the high-profile prosecution.

Prosecutor Dan Bahat revealed that the Antiquities Authority was determined not to return dozens of items, including the burial box and the stone tablet to their owner, despite his acquittal on all the relevant charges.

Bahat compared it to returning drugs to a dealer acquitted on a technicality.

Oded Golan, 60, was cleared in March on 41 counts of forgery, fraud and other serious crimes related to what antiquities officials and police had described as a worldwide, multi-million-dollar network designed to falsify history and dupe museums and collectors into buying worthless fakes. Golan was convicted on three minor counts of handling goods suspected of being stolen and dealing in antiquities without a license.

The case attracted worldwide attention because of a stone burial box, or ossuary, inscribed with the Aramaic legend “James son of Joseph brother of Jesus.”

The prosecution was unable to prove its assertion that the words “brother of Jesus” were a modern addition and Golan was cleared of faking them.

If genuine, the ossuary is the only known artifact that could be directly connected to the family of the historical Jesus.

Golan was also acquitted on all charges relating to a black stone tablet inscribed in ancient Hebrew recording repairs to the Temple carried out by King Jehoash around 800 BCE. If genuine, it is the only item yet discovered that may have adorned the First Temple.

In December 2007, Amir Ganor, head of the antiquities authority anti-theft unit and the architect of the fraud trial, said the Antiquities Authority would return return more than 200 artifacts seized from Golan.

“I am holding the exhibits under a court order,” Ganor told the court. “When the trial is over, I imagine I will be happy to get rid of everything I have in the storeroom and return it to Oded Golan, including the ossuary.”

The trial has now ended, but even though Golan was acquitted on all charges related to the most important artifacts in the case, the prosecutor demanded the permanent confiscation of all the items. He also urged the judge to impose a maximum sentence for the three minor misdemeanors even though it was Golan’s first offense.

“I do not agree that there is an absence of a criminal history. There were illegal activities,” Bahat charged, prompting a sharp rebuke from Judge Aharon Farkash.

“You are trying to mount a new trial,” said the judge, who even referred to a “witchhunt” against Golan.

The Antiquities Authority has shown no sign that it accepts the not guilty verdict. Its spokesmen continue to describe the items in the trial as fakes and the authority appears to be determined to punish Golan despite losing the case.

Bahat said the decision to seek confiscation of the property and a harsh sentence had been taken personally by the state attorney.

GOLAN, WHO was imprisoned twice by police for short periods during the investigation and then held under house arrest for more than 700 days, as well as losing untold income over the 10-year investigation and trial, said he had expected the court to order the immediate return of the hundreds of items and documents taken by the police and hoped the judge would not impose further punishment.

Bahat presented two apparently contradictory arguments to the court. First, he said that since the judge had ruled the items were not fakes as charged in the indictment, they were in fact real antiquities and Golan was therefore not a collector but a dealer and so had an obligation to maintain a full inventory of his stock.

Judge Farkash pointedly reminded him that this accusation had not even been hinted at in any of the 44 crimes listed in the indictment.

“I don’t recall that in any of the charges you accused him of this crime of being an unlicensed dealer. How can you now ask me to consider this when deciding on the sentence?” asked the judge. “You are now asking me to take into consideration that he didn’t maintain an inventory. I don’t recall that was included in any of the 18 counts, either as a specific charge or within any of the charges on the indictment.”

Bahat then performed an abrupt about-turn, arguing that, despite Golan’s acquittal, the “likelihood” is that the items were fakes.

“In my opinion, it is inconceivable that the items should be returned to the accused,” said Bahat. “I say there is no choice.”

Bahat said it would be unacceptable for Golan to benefit from the ossuary or other artifacts.

“He can sell it, exhibit it. I cannot countenance that if the item is fake that he should get it back,” said Bahat, suggesting the items be given to the Israel Police forensics laboratory for educational purposes.

But Judge Farkash seemed unimpressed, particularly as he had singled out the forensics laboratory in his verdict for severe criticism for contaminating the ossuary inscription during testing, rendering it scientifically worthless.

“If the ossuary is a fake, it’s not an antiquity. How can I not return it to the accused?” he asked.

The judge suggested, only half-joking, that the items be put on display at the Israel Museum in special exhibition of artifacts from the trial. Golan himself says he has not yet decided what to do with them.

But Golan’s attorney Lior Bringer was scathing about the prosecution tactics.

“The prosecution is asking the court to punish the defendant for crimes for which he was acquitted,” said Bringer. “Golan admitted to the three minor charges he was convicted of in the first police interview. On these charges there was no need for a trial at all.”

“He spent more than two years under house arrest and was in prison twice. He has suffered enough,” said Bringer.

But the Antiquities Authority seems determined to enforce its will through the courts rather than academic discussion – and to pursue legal action against anyone who dares to challenge its diktat. The authority ordered the unprecedented prosecution of the late Prof. Hanan Eshel of Bar-Ilan University for buying important artifacts and studying them before handing them over to the state. Last week, the authority was back in court in Nazareth, prosecuting a resident of Zipori for “damaging” an ancient tomb that he discovered and was trying to preserve.

The writer is editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Report. His dispatches from the trial are atwww.jamesossuarytrial.blogspot.com/

WHY I BELIEVE THIS BOX CONTAINS JESUS'S BROTHER

SUNDAY EXPRESS, April 8, 2012

Oded Golan was acquitted of forgery charges

By MATTHEW KALMAN

ODED Golan was just 10 when he stumbled across a small clay tablet inscribed with ancient lettering while walking with his parents near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. It proved to be the oldest dictionary yet unearthed, seven lines of a phrase book for merchants in two ancient languages, Akkadian and Sumerian, and nearly 4,000 years old.

Within days, Professor Yigael Yadin, the father of modern Israeli archaeology, came knocking at the door of the family home in Tel Aviv, asking to see “Mr Golan”, not realising that the learned scholar who had sent him a postcard describing the find was a schoolboy.

Golan escorted the professor to his bedroom to show him the artefact and agreed to let Yadin take it back to Jerusalem for analysis. His mother served tea and biscuits.

By the age of 50, after a lifetime of collecting antiquities, Golan was renowned among scholars for owning one of the finest archaeological collections in the world. His Tel Aviv apartment, lined with glass-fronted display cases crammed with ancient pots, weapons, cultic vessels and altars became a place of pilgrimage for academics and dealers. Thousands more pieces were stored in warehouses. However, his hobby was about to land him in jail and make him an object of international ridicule.

"It will remain part of my collection. I don’t intend to sell it"
Oded Golan

In 2002, Andre Lemaire, a visiting professor of ancient languages from the Sorbonne, was leafing through the albums of Golan’s collection when he came across a photograph of a Roman-era burial box, or ossuary, made of limestone with the eye-popping inscription “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” in ancient Aramaic.

Lemaire published the sensational find in the Biblical Archaeology Review. It made headlines around the world. Thousands of people flocked to the first public exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Golan was hailed as the owner of the only item ever discovered that might be connected with the family of Jesus Christ. Academic articles, books and documentaries debating the significance of the ossuary, whose value was conservatively placed at £1.2million, followed.

The celebrations were shortlived. The Israel Antiquities Authority seized the ossuary and subjected it to tests by two panels of experts. It also seized a black stone tablet with an inscription from King Jehoash in the 9th century BC that might be the only item recovered from Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.

In June 2003 the experts declared both items fake. Golan was arrested and held in jail for a month. Police raided his home, office and warehouses around Tel Aviv, seizing hundreds of items along with tools, computer files and half-finished artefacts that led them to believe Golan was the mastermind behind an antiquities forgery ring that was milking museums and collectors around the world of millions of dollars.

Golan said he had bought the ossuary 25 years earlier from an Arab dealer in the Old City of Jerusalem. “I never faked an antiquity in my life,” he insisted.

In December 2004, he and four others were indicted on 18 counts of forgery, fraud and obtaining money by deception. Golan was placed under house arrest for two years, more than a year of which he had to spend at the home of his elderly parents.

When the trial opened in the Jerusalem District Court in September 2005, Golan faced 44 charges. His reputation was in ruins.

The Israel Antiquities Authority staked its reputation on the trial, recruiting experts from around the world who testified the items were fake. By the time Judge Aharon Farkash retired to consider his verdict in October 2010, he had presided over 120 sessions, examined 200 exhibits (some of them entire books) and heard more than 12,000 pages of testimony from 126 witnesses.

The case revealed furtive encounters with Arab tomb robbers, high finance, skulduggery, smuggling and transactions involving hundreds of thousands of dollars based on a handshake and paid in cash behind the apparently cultured facade of collecting priceless antiquities.

“This was the first time that a court was asked to rule on a question of antiquities forgery,” Judge Farkash said last month, summarising testimony from experts in archaeology, the Bible, chemistry and geochemistry, geology, paleography and more. The list of witnesses read like a who’s who of the world’s leading scholars but as the judge wryly noted in his verdict, even the professors appearing for the same side disagreed with one another and sometimes even with themselves, changing their minds as time passed.

“If you, the world’s leading experts in this field, cannot agree with each other on the authenticity or otherwise of these items, how do you expect me, a mere judge, to reach a conclusion?” he said, before delivering his 475-page verdict on March 14.

Golan was exonerated of forgery, acquitted on 41 of the charges and found guilty on just three minor counts of unlicensed antiquities trading and holding items suspected of being stolen.

Judge Farkash warned that the verdict did not mean the items were necessarily genuine or that the “Jesus” on the ossuary was Jesus Christ but his ruling rescued Golan’s treasures from the dustbin of history. “I was never worried about the ossuary or the Jehoash Tablet,” Golan said after the verdict, “I cannot guarantee that it belonged to the brother of Jesus Christ but it is definitely ancient. I have no doubt about it.”

Born into a wealthy Tel Aviv family, Golan studied engineering and became a serial entrepreneur with successful businesses in travel, architectural seminars, property development and educational software.

Back in his apartment, Golan said he last saw the ossuary two years ago in court. “It will remain part of my collection. I don’t intend to sell it. I will have to consider over the coming months about whether to lend it to a museum or other institution for public exhibition.”

He said he was surprised at the explosion of interest in the ossuary because he knew little about Christian history and had never connected the inscription to Christ. “I purchased it in the mid or late-Seventies in East Jerusalem from one of the dealers in the Old City,” he said. “I didn’t recognise either its importance or its value for a long time. I didn’t even know that Jesus had siblings.

“No one can say for certain it is connected to the family of Jesus but there is a very high likelihood it is. If it really is the burial box of Jesus’s brother, it is a very exciting artefact. It is truly a historic item with a strong emotional importance.”

Antiquities collector acquitted of forgery charges in ‘James ossuary’ case

The media are given a preview of The James Ossuary on display at the Royal Ontario Museum. Nov.14.2002 (Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail)

MATTHEW KALMAN

Jerusalem— Special to Globe and Mail Update

Published Wednesday, Mar. 14, 2012

A Roman-era burial box inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” was reprieved from the scrapheap of history on Wednesday when a Jerusalem judge completely exonerated an Israeli antiquities collector who had been accused of forging it.
The verdict, delivered by Judge Aharon Farkash in a tiny, crowded courtroom in the Jerusalem District Courthouse, ended a seven-year ordeal for the accused, Oded Golan, 60, but it will do little to extinguish the decade-long scientific controversy over the authenticity of the limestone box which has raged since it was first displayed to the public at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2002.
If genuine, the burial box, or ossuary, is the first physical artifact yet discovered that might be connected with the family of the historical Jesus Christ.
Mr. Golan had been accused of adding the second half of the inscription linking it to Jesus, and then fabricating the patina, the bio-organic coating that adheres to ancient objects, to pass it off as genuine.
But Judge Farkash said the prosecution had failed to prove any of the serious charges against Mr. Golan and acquitted him on all but three minor charges of illegal antiquities dealing and possession of stolen antiquities. Robert Deutsch, a co-defendant, was acquitted on all charges.
“The prosecution failed to prove beyond all reasonable doubt what was stated in the indictment: that the ossuary is a forgery and that Mr. Golan or someone acting on his behalf forged it,” Judge Farkash told the court, summarizing his 475-page verdict.
He noted that it was the first time a criminal court had been asked to rule in a case of antiquities forgery.
The spectacular collapse of the trial, nine years after Mr. Golan was arrested and thousands of items were seized from his home, office and warehouses in Tel Aviv, was a severe blow to the Israeli police and Israel Antiquities Authority, who claimed they had exposed “the tip of the iceberg” of an international conspiracy selling fake artifacts to collectors and museums worldwide.
The verdict will be welcomed by those who hope that the ossuary will finally provide a physical connection to the historical Jesus.
But Judge Farkash, who said he had heard from 126 witnesses and sat through 120 sessions that produced more than 12,000 pages of testimony, acknowledged that the collapse of the criminal trial did not signal the end of the scientific debate over the authenticity of the ossuary.
“This is not to say that the inscription on the ossuary is true and authentic and was written 2,000 years ago,” he said. “We can expect this matter to continue to be researched in the archaeological and scientific worlds and only the future will tell. Moreover, it has not been proved in any way that the words ‘brother of Jesus’ definitely refer to the Jesus who appears in Christian writings.’
Judge Farkash was particularly scathing about tests carried out by the Israel police forensics laboratory that he said had probably contaminated the ossuary, making it impossible to carry out further scientific tests on the inscription.
Mr. Golan, who was accompanied to court by his elderly parents, said he was “delighted at the complete and total acquittal I have received here today.”
“We brought experts from all over the world who testified that the inscriptions on the items that were suspected of being fakes are completely authentic, following research work by dozens of experts,” he said.
Prosecutor Dan Bahat said the case had been complicated by the refusal of a key witness, who was suspected of helping to forge many of the items, to come from Egypt to testify.
“What we tried to do here has set an international precedent,” said Mr. Bahat. “This is the first time someone has brought the issue of antiquities forgery before a court. Regarding at least one object, a decanter, the court found it was fake.”

CHANNEL 4 NEWS: JESUS BOX - REAL OR FORGERY?

MK production for Channel 4 News: The 'Jesus' box: clever forgery or genuine article?

Monday, 12 March 2012

Channel 4 News interview: Jesus Tomb claims

BABY YOU CAN DRIVE MY ELECTRIC CAR

Better Place founder Shai Agassi, about to launch the world’s first fleet of all-electric cars in Israel, tells MATTHEW KALMAN he is surprised to find himself alone on the grid

SHAI AGASSI IS OUT FRONT and loving it. Four years after announcing he would launch the world’s first national network for all-electric cars in Israel, his Better Place company is in pole position on the starting-grid in what appears to be a one-car race.
In January, the first consignment of 100 Renault Fluence ZE (“Zero Emissions”) family sedans arrived in Israel. By the end of 2012, hundreds of Israelis will be driving around the country in cars powered only by electric batteries supplied by Better Place. They will be able to trickle-charge their vehicles over several hours at thousands of charge spots at their office, in the streets of major cities, at public parking lots or overnight at their homes. Each full-charged battery will fuel about 100 miles of driving.
For longer distances, drivers will be able to use a national network of swap stations where spent batteries will be replaced by fully-charged batteries in an automated process that takes less time than filling a gasoline tank.
Agassi, a whiz-kid programmer who sold his first company for $400 million in his early thirties, says he is amazed that four years on, with the Israeli network about to go live and more networks under construction in Denmark and Australia – as well as pilot programs in Canada, California and Hawaii – Better Place has no serious competitors.

No competition

“There has never been a technology disruption of this magnitude where one company was left to run with an idea, where no competition showed up in the span of four years,” Agassi tells The Jerusalem Report.
“That to me is astonishing. It’s as if somebody would have left Apple for four years to build an MP3 empire and expected to catch up. In technology, usually one year is enough to create an advantage that is really hard to catch up afterwards.
“We all thought that the car industry would be more pro-active in catching up and what we’re seeing is that the car industry is extremely conservative,” he says.
Agassi, who drove an electric car to commute to his office in Palo Alto before relocating back to Israel, where he was born in 1968, to launch Better Place, is passionate that electric cars are not just a passing trend but a mass-market phenomenon that will sweep the automobile industry. He believes the all-electric Renault Fluence ZE will become a top-selling car in both Israel and in Denmark, where the second Better Place network is planned.
Agassi says the plan he originally announced in 2008 is on track. “By and large we were scarily accurate on most of the predictions that we made,” he says.
“We needed a few less stations than we originally thought, less public charge spots than we thought. Most of the charge spots are actually at people’s homes, not in the public area,” he says.
One surprise is that early applicants are not limited to people driving shorter distances, but include heavy users driving up to 30,000 miles a year. In the past few months, Better Place has signed deals with 400 corporate fleets and three of Israel’s top five leasing companies. They include major corporations like cellphone companies whose fleets are on the road all the time, clocking up high mileage.

Mileage package

The Fluence ZE is being sold to private customers for NIS 122,900 ($33,000), a comparable price to the regular model. Customers then purchase a mileage package from Better Place that includes the battery, recharging and swapping, up to a certain mileage per year – similar to a cellphone package. A basic 20,000 km (12,427 miles) per year costs NIS 1,090 ($295) per month, while 30,000 km (18,641 miles) costs NIS 1,599 ($432) per month. Better Place says customers will save about 15 percent in fuel costs and more in lower maintenance and insurance compared to a gas-fueled vehicle.
A special package costing NIS 157,500 ($42,600) includes the Fluence ZE and all-inclusive service for three years for those driving up to 25,000 km (15,534 miles), giving an estimated saving of 35% over a similar gas-powered car.
“They are actually showing up for financial reasons, less than for altruistic reasons,” says Agassi.
“When you get a car that is actually cheaper than the gasoline equivalent, you open up a much broader market than just the niche early adopters,” he says.
When he launched the project in 2008, Agassi said he was also inspired to rid the world of its dependency on oil and the pollution it creates. He predicted that oil prices would continue to rise, increasing the advantage of electrically powered vehicles.
“Within a decade, the cost of energy for a single year of fuel supply for a combustion car should cost more than the cost of energy for an electric car’s entire life, even when taking the cost of battery into consideration,” Agassi said.

Convinced

Today he is even more convinced of that calculation.
“The odds of the world oil prices actually going down, given everything we’re seeing around us today, I wouldn’t take that bet. If anyone’s betting on a two-digit number in the next three years, they either found a way to create world peace or they found a way to bring oil from places we don’t know yet,” he says.
“Nothing in the macro conditions, short, medium and long-term, indicate oil’s going to go below $100 a barrel.”
He also points to China, where Better Place buys its batteries. The Chinese are looking at the Better Place model very closely and may well launch their own competing network, if the company does well in Israel and Denmark.
“Just in the next five years with growth of seven to eight percent in China, you’re adding almost all the cars in Western Europe in China in the next five years,” Agassi says.
His confidence is shared by some of the savviest investors in the game. Nissan-Renault has poured more than half a billion dollars into developing the new sedans and expects to supply more than 70,000 electric cars for Better Place drivers in Israel over the next three years.
Leading funds have lined up to provide Better Place with more cash than Agassi expected. Last year, the company raised $200 million from investors, bringing the total to around $750 million. Investors include America’s General Electric conglomerate and the Swiss UBS banking group. The company is now valued at approximately $2.25 billion.

Highly attractive

“Of all the clean tech we looked at in the area of transportation, nothing compares to Better Place. The business model is highly attractive,” says Anthony Bernbaum, the global head of direct principal investments at HSBC, Britain’s international banking corporation, which has sunk $150 million into Better Place so far.
Agassi says the new investment will allow Better Place to start expanding into other areas.
“The real next big networks will most likely happen in Western Europe,” he says, but Better Place is already looking further afield with future plans dependent on the success of its first three networks.
“Think of Israel’s network as a single cell organism, integrated and covering the entire country. Denmark is roughly the same. Think of Australia as a three and-a-half cell organism with one network connecting it. Melbourne is a cell roughly the size of Israel, same thing for Sydney, same thing for Brisbane and a half cell for Canberra, connected with a freeway that is roughly the same length as the freeway between San Diego and Seattle,” says Agassi.
“When we prove that we can do a cell, it’s not that hard to expand it to do multi-cell. Once you do multicell, you prove that you can actually do places like the US,” he says.

OSCAR: The friend in your car

Inside every car is a computer called Oscar. It is an advanced entertainment center, GPS navigation system and fuel controller all rolled into one. It also provides a constant wireless interface between the car and the national network, with a direct link to the National Operations Center.
“If I want to drive from here to Jerusalem, all I have to do is put the address inside the car,” says Better Place CTO Barak Hershkovitz. “Once you put the destination inside Oscar, it will not just build a route plan like any GPS system. It will do a very accurate range calculation of what will be the exact state of charge of the battery when we get to our destination.”
Oscar absorbs each driver’s habits and adjusts its calculation of fuel consumption accordingly. It will also take into account various factors including the weather, how many people are in the car, whether there are bicycles on the roof creating extra drag, and whether the journey is uphill or downhill.
“We will know how you drive, how your specific battery behaves, how your specific car behaves and we will have a very accurate statistical model that will predict the range when you arrive. The longer you drive the car, the smarter the system becomes,” says Hershkovitz.
“The car communicates with the Network Operations Center (NOC). The user doesn’t do anything. Oscar does that for you. It has a charge application inside. It knows everything about the car, it knows everything about the battery, it knows what the user wants and sends it automatically to the NOC.
“When you go for a battery switch, Oscar already communicates with the switch station. He senses that you are coming. There is a wireless connection. He knows what car you are, what kind of user. He will tell you at each step where you are in the process.”

The Switch

The driver programs their destination into Oscar, the in-car computer, which maps out a route. If the route is beyond the current fuel charge left in the battery, Oscar will program a route via a battery-switching station so there will be enough electric “fuel” to complete the journey.
A national network of switch stations means that a battery change is never more than 15 miles away. Oscar continuously monitors the car’s battery charge and estimates the remaining charge on reaching the planned destination. If a swap is necessary, Oscar maps out a route to the most convenient switch station and alerts the station as the car approaches.
Screens inside the car and on the wall of the switch station guide the driver through the process. At the entrance to a short tunnel similar to a car wash, the driver switches off his engine while the car is manoeuvered into position by hydraulic clamps. The battery weighs more than 500 pounds, but the removal of the gasoline engine and tank means that overall the vehicle is only about 100 pounds heavier than a regular car.
Inside the station, 16 batteries are cooled and recharged at optimum current to maintain battery longevity. By the time the last battery is swapped, the first is recharged and ready for use. Each battery carries a full charge of 22 kilowatt hours, giving a driving range of approximately 100 miles in normal conditions.
The underside of the car is washed and dried to avoid dirt contaminating the switching station. The car is then lifted on hydraulic jacks and a well opens beneath the car. Through wireless communication with Oscar, the switch station knows the exact car model and chooses the appropriate battery.
A robot releases and removes the spent battery from its enclosure between the rear passenger seat and the trunk, and lowers it into the underground rack where its diagnostics will be checked and it will be recharged. The robot then lifts a replacement battery into the car and fixes it in place. The well closes, the jacks are lowered, the clamps are released and the driver is instructed to restart the engine and drive away on the fully charged battery and complete the journey.
The entire process has taken three minutes and 40 seconds – the same time it would take to refuel at a gas station.

Charge it

Better Place’s blue and gray, sleek, thigh-high charging posts are intended to look and function more like high-tech appliances than passive electric sockets. They have sprouted in parking lots and along pavement-side parking spots around the counrtry, prompting some surprised residents to wonder if they are a new-fangled parking meter.
Access to the actual sockets in the post is possible only by swiping a Better Place smart card over a card-reader on the top, to identify the customer as a subscriber. This prevents unauthorized access and vandalism, and also enables the company to charge automatically for the service. The charge point allows subscribers to refuel their vehicles for regular journeys at home, their place of business or one of thousands of public locations while they are asleep or at work.
Each Better Place charge point is connected to the National Operations Center that continuously monitors the level of charge and other diagnostics. Wireless control allows smart management to avoid overloading the electricity grid while ensuring that each battery is fully charged for the next journey. A modem inside each charge point reports technical problems or power failures that are either solved remotely or passed on to customer service and engineers.
“Eighty-five percent of drivers drive about 35 miles a day,” says Better Place CTO Barak Hershkovitz. “The car is parked for 22 hours. The feeling you get as a consumer, if you have a charge spot at home and a charge spot at work, is that by magic your car is full all the time.
“We have two energy networks: one for charging and one for range extension. I can immediately get an extra battery that will immediately take me the extra range,” he says.
Users sign a service contract similar to a cellphone subscription under which Better Place retains ownership of the battery, lowering the cost of the car and allowing future technological improvements without users having to buy replacement batteries.
“My supreme goal is to get off oil, not just to make Better Place profitable,” says Hershkovitz. “I see a technology that’s really creating a dramatic change in the world. It’s not a small enhancement, it’s a revolution.”

JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR FOOTNOTE

Joseph Cedar, writer/director of the Oscar-nominated “Footnote,” tells MATTHEW KALMAN that Israeli films do not have to focus on the conflict to attract international interest

The Jerusalem Report, issue dated February 27, 2012

Film director Joseph Cedar returns to the Academy Awards this month for the second time in four years. His latest movie “Footnote” – a compelling tragi-comedy of father-son relations set in the obscure world of Talmudic philology – has already won Israel’s top cinema prize and was named best script at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Now it has been nominated for the best foreign film Oscar, just like his last movie “Beaufort,” which in 2008 became Israel’s first Academy Award nomination in nearly three decades.

A flood of awards and nominations has accompanied what the “Los Angeles Times” called “Israel’s film renaissance” in recent years. Since Cedar broke the drought, two more Israeli films – “Waltz with Bashir” and “Ajami” have also been nominated for Oscars, while these and other Israeli films have taken home gold and silver Globes, Bears, Cameras and Lions from film festivals in Berlin, Venice, Los Angeles and Cannes.

Unlike the three previous Israeli Oscar nominations, including Cedar’s own “Beaufort” which dealt with the gut-wrenching tensions surrounding Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, the director’s latest movie marks an abrupt departure from the theme of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

But Cedar, who at 43 is widely considered the leading light of this sparkling new generation of Israeli filmmakers, tells The Jerusalem Report that Israeli cinema has much more to offer than a variation on the political themes thrashed out each day in the newspapers.

JOSEPH CEDAR ON SET (Photo: Ran Mendelson)

“I really think that some of the best films that came out of Israel recently are not necessarily about the conflict or about political angles of things in our region,” says the soft-spoken Cedar, whose distinctive New York tones recall the city where he was born and raised. He emigrated to Israel at age six before returning to New York for film school. He now lives in Tel Aviv with his wife Vered, a journalist, and their three children.

“When you look at those films, the reason they were nominated or received attention outside of Israel didn’t really have to do with their political message or their subject matter. It had to do with the filmmaking,” he says.

“‘Ajami,’ at least for me, was such a miracle in how it was made and how it was able to give an audience this authentic experience that seemed effortless but was actually constructed of really challenging elements of non-actors doing extremely dramatic scenes.

“It’s more of a coincidence that they were films that dealt with kind of political aspects. They are films that were interesting for other reasons,” he says.

Father versus son

Cedar happily admits that the subject of “Footnote” could not be more opaque. The film is all about interpretation, set in a world where scholars labor in dusty basements over fragments of ancient texts. A father and son, both Talmudic scholars but with radically different approaches, are caught in a scholarly rivalry that stretches the bond between them to breaking-point and challenges their own integrity.

“New York Times” film critic A.O.Scott said the film “blends academic satire, classic Jewish humor and an almost Shakespearean sense of the tragic potential of the paternal bond.”

The two lead characters, brilliantly played by Shlomo Bar-Aba and Lior Ashkenazi, inhabit a world where an entire life’s work might win international acclaim or be reduced to a single footnote in a forgotten monograph. When outside society comes calling in the form of an ambitious young reporter, the elderly scholar is forced to confront the painful truth that his whole life has been devoted to the study of a subject that no one but a handful of people care about or can even comprehend. The plot turns on whether public acclaim for son or father will be decided by a simple bureaucratic error.

“I’m still in a battle zone, just not between armies, between family members. It’s about a father and son and a competition between them that just crosses all the boundaries that you’d think would exist between a father and son,” says Cedar. “In ‘Footnote’ the characters cross that red line and do things that are really extreme one to another.”

But Cedar declines to be drawn further on interpreting his own award-winning story, preferring others to seek their own meaning in the movie.

“There is something about this film that my instinct has been telling me not to interpret,” he says. “There are a few things that seem to exist in the storyline. Every time I put my finger on one theme or another it somehow reduces what actually is there for the audience.

“Clearly the main dramatic tension is between a father and a son, but the thing or the issue or the sentiment that they are arguing about is really wide in how it seems relevant to many things in my life – not only in my relationship to my son and to my father.”

Cedar says he chose to set the film in the obscure world of philological research after stumbling across the Talmud department at the Hebrew University, where his own father happens to be a world-renowned professor of science.

“Aside from issues that are extremely relevant to me, I found rivalries that were just really extreme, and characters who are unforgiving and who never compromise about anything. It was clear that I had found a gold mine of dramatic treasure,” he says. “The fact that these great epic rivalries had to do with the tiniest, sometimes esoteric nuances of this text that is probably the most important text in our culture, is an added bonus. It allowed me to touch things that I’m happy I had a chance to deal with.”

Asked to explain how such intense passions are ignited by such tiny matters of scholarly analysis, Cedar likes to quote Henry Kissinger, who said the reason that academics are so vicious “is because the stakes are so small.”

While the movie clearly transcends the very small world in which it is set and has proven its appeal to a broad audience, Cedar likes the fact that it is so Jewish.

“There’s something very unique about the world that this film takes place in. Hopefully there are things that an audience outside that world can appreciate or at least be interested in but these characters are extremely specific,” he says.

“The field of manuscript research and Hebrew philology and Talmudic philology is so challenging in Judaic studies because, unlike the Vatican, we don’t really have archives and libraries that connect us to manuscripts continuously over the decades. There are big holes in our heritage. So the job of a Talmudic philologist is really to put together a puzzle with many, many missing pieces. That in itself is unique for Judaic studies.

“Jewish texts were always in danger. It became a survival tool to pass on our data from generation to generation orally, which is also a great philological challenge to decipher because there’s such a big difference between how you convey something orally and how you would convey it in writing,” he says.

Strictly observant

The interaction between text and meaning, and the layers that evolve as different people communicate, lies at the heart of “Footnote.” It is also a film about the limits of integrity, an issue that is familiar territory for Cedar. Rare among Israeli filmmakers, he is an Orthodox Jew who is strictly observant. To collect his awards at both Berlin and Cannes, where the ceremonies started just as night was falling on Saturday, Cedar and his 100-strong entourage walked a mile or so through the crowded festival streets to arrive on foot and avoid desecrating Shabbat.

Despite his fluency in both Hebrew and English, Cedar says he has no particular desire to make films outside Israel, but language continues to fascinate him.

“It’s something I’m dealing with now. It’s actually in a remote way the subject of my next film. Not whether I can make a film in English, but how far a character can move away from his comfort zone or his roots without feeling that he’s all by himself in the world,” he says, declining to describe the new movie in any more detail.

“I’ve decided not to talk about it until it’s there,” he says. “Too many times I’ve said something about a project that hasn’t happened or turned out to be completely different. It’s hard enough to talk about a film after it’s made. Talking about it before it’s made is impossible.”

He says his filmmaking process is largely “unconscious” – something brought home to him after comparisons were drawn between themes in his last two films. “Beaufort” was set in a military base built on the ruins of a Crusader castle. The word “fortress” turns out to be the key to deciphering the central text in “Footnote.”

“Someone pointed out to me after the film was made the relation between the word ‘fortress’ and the fact that I just made a film that deals with the complexities of a fortress.”

“In retrospect, there’s a direct connection between those two films, how they show two sides of what a fortress is,” Cedar says. “It’s something that someone pointed out to me afterwards. I had not thought of that.”

Better Place Launches Electric Fleet in Israel

Published by MIT

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Business

A network of fast battery-switching stations offers an unusual business model for electric cars.

• By Matthew Kalman

Roll out: A fleet of 100 Renault Fluence electric cars arriving in Israel last week.
Better Place

See the rest of our Business Impact report on The Connected Vehicle.

In four years, the electric-car company Better Place has traveled from startup to starting line. Last week, a fleet of 100 electrically powered Renault Fluence ZE sedans set out in a caravan along Israeli highways, signaling the start of the company's efforts to reach a wide swath of consumers.

The cars are fueled by 225-kilogram lithium-ion batteries with a range of 160 kilometers. The batteries can be recharged at home or swapped for fully charged ones at a network of robotic battery-switching stations that Better Place has built throughout Israel to let owners extend their cars' range.

The switching stations, plus apps that guide a driver to them, are what make Better Place's business unique. In Israel, gas is expensive, and there are also high taxes on gasoline-powered cars, making electric vehicles more attractive.

Agassi predicts that by next year, electric cars will be the best-selling vehicles in both Israel and Denmark. Those, along with Australia, are the nations where the service is being launched this year.

The 100 new cars that took the road last week are all for Better Place employees, although a company spokesman says employees will pay to lease them just "like everyone else." About 70 cars were on the road already.

The Fluence ZE (for zero emissions) is a pleasure to drive. Smooth and silent, the car glides easily past the speed limit on Israel's fastest highways. Its navigation system can provide directions to the nearest battery-switching station at any time.

Better Place has won some important endorsements for its business model, which remains largely unchanged since the company was founded in 2008. Last November, it raised $200 million from investors, bringing the total it has raised to around $750 million. The company is now valued at approximately $2.25 billion.

Quick fix: A Better Place battery-swapping station in Israel, where putting a fresh battery in an electric car takes about as long as filling a gas tank.
Better Place

While some skepticism still surrounds the venture, two car leasing companies in Israel have recently signed on."We think switchable EV is more appealing ... for the consumer because it solves the range issue and makes the cars much more economic," says Anthony Bernbaum, the global head of direct principal investments at HSBC, which has so far sunk $150 million into the company. "We believe switchable EV will be the more enduring business model."

Most automakers are working on hybrid vehicles or electric vehicles using proprietary battery packs that don't pop out. That's left Better Place as the only large commercial venture betting on battery swapping. "The biggest surprise I have in the last four years is that we were left to our own to build a four-year advantage," says Agassi.

Competitors could emerge if Better Place finds commercial success. Agassi says the company plans to use the money it has raised to set up networks in more European countries, possibly France and Germany. That means plans for launches in Hawaii, China, and California will likely be put on the back burner for the time being.

"Everybody is waiting for them to prove the model," says Sam Jaffe, an analyst in renewable and distributed energy strategies at IDC Energy Strategies. "There are a lot of people following what they're doing very closely."

FUCHSBERG JERUSALEM CENTER
8 Agron Street, Jerusalem
MONDAY EVENING FORUM
LECTURES & DISCUSSIONS IN ENGLISH
Monday January 16
THE JAMES OSSUARY “FRAUD” TRIAL IN JERUSALEM:
A REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK
with Matthew Kalman, foreign correspondent and filmmaker

AT 8.00 PM, ADMISSION 20 NIS

Vast Syrian crowds demand Arab League observers' help

Saturday 31 December 2011

Emboldened protesters turn out in hundreds of thousands to put new pressure on Assad

Loveday Morris and Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem

In the largest demonstrations for months, as many as a million Syrians poured on to the country's streets yesterday, determined to draw their plight to the attention of Arab League observers who some fear will turn a blind eye to atrocities by President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The protesters who swarmed on to public squares and roads from the country's most northerly cities to its southern border towns appeared emboldened by the presence of up to 100 monitors.

About 250,000 demonstrated in the central province of Hama, with a similar number in Idlib, near the Turkish border, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The organisation put the total number on the streets at nearly one million, in the biggest display of anti-government sentiment since at least July. In Homs, the city at the heart of the revolution, television footage showed dancing protesters chanting: "Revolution of glory and freedom Syria".

"This Friday is different from any other Friday. It is a transformative step. People are eager to reach the monitors and tell them about their suffering," said Abu Hisham, an activist in Hama.

But, even with the Arab League team present, the violence continued, and appeared to take a more sinister turn. The Observatory claimed to have spoken to two people injured when a nail bomb was used by security forces to disperse a 70,000-strong demonstration in the Damascus suburb of Duma.

Live rounds and tear gas were also reported to have been fired on the protesters. With press access in the country severely restricted, such reports are difficult to verify.

Five were reported to have been shot dead when security forces opened fire on protesters in the southern city of Deraa, and another five were killed in Hama, with a total of 20 dead in the clashes across the country, according to the human rights group. Five people were snatched by security forces in an overnight raid in Homs, it claimed.

The Syrian government had posted snipers on rooftops and deployed its forces at trouble spots after opposition groups called for mass demonstrations to mark the first Friday prayers of the Arab League mission.

The team is in Syria to verify the government's compliance with an Arab League plan to end the violent crackdown, which includes the removal of tanks from the streets.

Human rights groups have accused the government of hiding artillery from observers. Yesterday activists in Idlib said tanks had been concealed. "They have moved the tanks out of main streets," said a member of the opposition Local Co-ordination Committee.

Comments from the head of the monitoring group, the Sudanese general, Mohamed Mustafa al-Dabi, who said he saw "nothing frightening" during his visit to Homs this week, have raised concerns among the opposition.

"70,000 people were shot with tear gas as they approached Clock Square. How can you not see anything?" said Rami Abdulrahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

While the remarks by General Dabi met with disbelief in the West, the Russian foreign ministry yesterday described his statement as "reassuring".

The comments came as government forces opened fire on demonstrators after Friday prayers in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour, the southern city of Deraa and elsewhere. In an indication of the diminishing levels of confidence in the Arab League team, protesters in Damascus chanted: "The monitors are witnesses who don't see anything."

The Local Co-ordination Committees said at least 130 people, including six children, have been killed in Syria since the Arab observers began their one-month mission on Tuesday.

In Washington, a State Department spokeswoman said that violence was continuing. "It's not only a matter of deploying the monitors," she said. "It's a matter of the Syrian government living up to its commitments to withdraw heavy weapons from the cities and to stop the violence everywhere."

Meanwhile, the Turkey-based commander of the anti-government Free Syrian Army said he had ordered fighters to stop offensive operations pending a meeting with the monitors.

Colonel Riad al-Asaad said his forces had so far been unable to talk to them. "I issued an order to stop all operations from the day the committee entered Syria last Friday," Colonel Asaad said.

Arab League: The Observers

The Arab League mission in Syria descended into farce almost as soon as it began. Despite video footage showing Syrian forces continuing their bloody crackdown on protesters in Homs on Wednesday, the man overseeing the League's observation of the unrest described the situation as "calm", adding "there were no clashes".

Mustafa al-Dabi, a Sudanese general, was head of military intelligence following the 1989 coup led by Omar al-Bashir (subsequently accused of war crimes). It is alleged that General Dabi encouraged a brutal crackdown on rebels. He also cultivated Sudan's links with Syria.

Even as General Dabi spoke on Wednesday, the body of a child allegedly murdered by Assad's forces was placed on the bonnet of a white Arab League 4x4. He went on to say that there was "nothing frightening" in the town.

Syrian protesters die as Arab group tours cities

Friday 30 December 2011

Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem

Syrian opposition activists have called for the removal of the head of the Arab League monitoring team, just two days after the monitors started their mission to gauge if the regime of President Bashar al-Assad was complying with a peace plan which it signed.

Syrian forces opened fire again yesterday, killing more than 30 people, despite the presence of the 60 monitors who spread out between several of the flashpoint cities in the nine-month uprising against the al-Assad government.

As monitors arrived in the Damascus suburb of Douma, troops opened fire, killing 13 people, according to the Local Co-ordination Committees, an opposition group. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said people were killed when soldiers shot at protesters gathering near the Grand Mosque in Douma as the observers were arriving at city hall. More deaths were reported in Hama, Homs and Idlib, despite the presence of the observers in all those cities.

Opponents of the Syrian regime say the arrival of the Arab League team led by General Mustafa al-Dabi of Sudan has done nothing to quell the violence. General Dabi was head of military intelligence and then external security in the regime of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, now under an international arrest warrant on charges of committing genocide in Darfur. His appointment has also been criticised by independent human rights observers.

Omar Idilbi, an activist with the Local Co-ordination Committees, said Dabi was a "senior officer with an oppressive regime that is known to repress opposition". Haytham Manna, a prominent Paris-based dissident, also urged the Arab League to replace General al-Dabi or reduce his authority.

Israel hints that Turkey was guilty of its own 'holocaust'

Tuesday 27 December 2011

Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem

In a step that will further inflame already fraught relations between Israel and Turkey, parliamentarians in Jerusalem have publicly debated for the first time whether to recognise Turkish responsibility for the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915.

The Knesset session yesterday followed a French vote last week outlawing denial of the massacres, a step that angered the Turkish government.

"Denying a holocaust is something that history cannot agree with," Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said during a discussion in the Knesset's Education, Culture and Sports Committee, breaking a decades-long taboo on public debate by the Knesset on the issue – and a longtime avoidance of the use of the word "holocaust", which most Israelis prefer to apply only to the Nazi massacre of six million Jews. "We believe that as humans, as Jews and as citizens of the State of Israel – along with members of Knesset that are not Jewish – we must put the subject on the national agenda," Mr Rivlin said.

In the past, successive Israeli governments had suppressed discussion of the issue for fear of offending Turkey, a rare Muslim ally of the Jewish state. Academic symposiums have been held at Israeli universities and the former Education Minister Yossi Sarid attended two Armenian government conferences marking the 85th and 90th anniversaries of the massacre.

Following the breakdown of relations over the killing of nine passengers aboard a Turkish ship trying to enter Gaza in 2010, pressure grew for Israel's parliament to acknowledge the historical suffering of Armenians.

"Acknowledging the horrors that took place in the past should not affect future relations with Turkey," Zahava Gal-On, leader of the left-wing Meretz party, said during the debate. "The moral duty to recognise the Armenian genocide is not a partisan issue.

"As a daughter to the Jewish people, who underwent a holocaust that has no precedent in human memory, we have the moral duty to show sensitivity to the calamity of other nations.

"A million and a half people were butchered. I know this is a sensitive topic and that throughout the years it has been used as a foreign policy tool in the hands of Israel's governments, but we have a moral duty. It is inconceivable that our school curriculums are silent on the Armenian genocide."

Foreign Ministry officials told the committee yesterday that Israel's view should be discussed "by historians, not politicians". Yaakov Amidror, security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urged postponement of the discussion because of the sensitivity of government efforts to repair relations with Turkey.

Egyptian blogger freed from military detention

Matthew Kalman
Monday, 26 December 2011

A prominent Egyptian blogger and democracy activist was released from military detention yesterday, nearly two months after his arrest on suspicion of inciting violence sparked outcry at home and abroad.

One of the first faces Alaa Abdel-Fattah saw when he emerged from his incarceration was his new son Khaled, born during his time at the Tora jail south of Cairo and named after a blogger killed during the turmoil in Egypt this year.

Mr Fattah was summoned by a military prosecutor in October after an article he wrote for Al-Shorouk newspaper blaming the military for the death of an activist during bloody clashes with Coptic Christians that month. Mr Fattah has always denied the charges and refused to recognise the right of the military court to arrest and interrogate civilians. He is among an estimated 12,000 Egyptians who have been brought before military courts since the army assumed interim power last February.

"I was imprisoned by the military prosecutor as a punishment for insisting on appearing before a civil judge," he wrote in a recent message smuggled from his cell.

An investigative judge ordered his release Sunday without charge. No further details were given.

Crying and spat on, plight of girl, 7, mobilises Israelis against extremists

Monday 26 December 2011

Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem

Thousands of Israelis are expected to march through the city of Bet Shemesh later this week to protest against the treatment of women by ultra-orthodox Jewish extremists, with tensions high after a seven-year-old girl said she had been spat on in the street.

Simmering public outrage over the segregation of women in ultra-orthodox, or haredi, areas erupted into anger after a Channel Two television broadcast on Friday night showed Naama Margolese, a seven-year-old haredi girl from Bet Shemesh, crying after being abused and spat on as she walked home from school.

Hours before the broadcast, women from across the political and religious spectrum met in Tel Aviv to discuss rising intolerance, which has seen them being asked to sit at the back of busses, the removal of women's faces from advertising in Jerusalem, and some streets closed to female pedestrians.

In the film, Naama is seen crying as she holds her mother's hand on the walk to her school. They are both orthodox, dressed in what most people would consider a modest fashion, but her mother wears a skirt that is only knee-length, and sports calf-length boots. Looking closely, you might catch a glimpse of her mother's knees, clad in thick tights.

"Do you want to walk just a little bit?" asks her mother, trying to persuade her to cross the road. "No, no!" screams the little girl.

"Lots of the time they scare me, that I'll get hurt or something like that," Naama told Channel Two. What is it like living in Bet Shemesh, she is asked. "Frightening". Later, the reporter stops an ultra-orthodox man identified as Moshe and asks him if he agrees with spitting at girls in the street.

"Yes, because they don't go modestly," he replies. "It bothers me. I'm a healthy man. It's right to spit on a girl who doesn't behave according to the law of the Torah. A seven-year-old, yes. What's the problem? The rabbis tell us how a woman should behave when she walks in the street and that's how it should be."

A Facebook group launched by the Israeli actor Tsviki Levin minutes after Friday's broadcast had gained more than 8,000 members by yesterday morning.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, weighed in on Saturday, and said law enforcement officials must "act aggressively against violence against women in the public sphere.

"Extremist groups cannot be allowed to infringe on the rights of women in the public sphere, which must remain open and safe for everyone," Mr Netanyahu said.

Israeli police said they had arrested one man interviewed in the Channel Two programme who admitted to spitting at women he felt were not dressed in a modest manner.

Palestinian rapprochement leaves Israel unimpressed

As Fatah and Hamas bury some of their differences, Tel Aviv says the move is a step back towards terror


Saturday 24 December 2011

Matthew Kalman

Jerusalem

A breakthrough agreement between Fatah, Hamas and other radical groups that could unify all Palestinian factions under a single political umbrella was yesterday greeted with scorn by Israeli officials, who said it marked a step away from peace and back towards terror.

Following talks in Cairo with the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, and the Islamic Jihad leader, Ramadan Shallah, the Palestinian President and leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Mahmoud Abbas, announced that a joint committee with representatives of all the groups would meet in Amman on 12 January to prepare for elections to the Palestine National Council, the ruling plenary body of the PLO.

It may take years to convene the PNC, but presidential and parliamentary elections in the Palestinian Authority have tentatively been set for May.

The agreement formally ends a 20-year stand-off in which Hamas and Islamic Jihad refused to join the Fatah-dominated PLO or participate in any peace talks that recognised Israel's right to exist. After boycotting elections to the Palestinian Authority because of its opposition to the Oslo peace accords, Hamas created a political party called Change and Reform that won the 2006 election. In 2007, Hamas evicted Fatah from the Gaza Strip in a bloody coup, setting up its own regime and ushering in a period of total division between Hamas-controlled Gaza and the Fatah-controlled West Bank.

Since then, peace talks have been effectively stymied by the fact that Mr Abbas could not claim to represent the Palestinian people as a whole. As a result, Israel has taken advantage of the internal Palestinian stalemate,

Fatah and Hamas have held several rounds of unity talks and even reached a draft agreement in 2009, but Hamas pulled out at the last minute. The Arab Spring, however, has driven both sides to move towards resolving their differences.

Hamas has been weakened by events in Syria which threaten to topple its patron, President Bashar Assad. Fatah, meanwhile, is under pressure from the public to finally unite the Palestinian territories, produce a peace deal with Israel and mend bridges with Hamas.

Israeli officials were far from enthusiastic about the rapprochement between the various Palestinian factions.

"Hamas is not a political movement that resorts to terrorism but a group whose whole vocation is terrorism," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "The closer President Abbas moves to Hamas, the further he moves away from peace," he said. "This is a movement that is terrorist to the core."

Khaled Abu Toameh, a Palestinian commentator, said the agreement by Hamas to join the PLO did not necessarily mean they had finally accepted the idea of peace with Israel. He said the Islamic resistance group had outsmarted Fatah before.

"Joining the PLO does not mean Hamas will necessarily change its strategy or give up on armed struggle, and its leaders have made contradictory statements on those issues while these talks have been going on," Abu Toameh said. "They ran in the 2006 election held under the Oslo peace accords but still refused to recognise the accords."

"They are effectively coming into the PLO without making any concessions. They have beaten Fatah before and they could do it again, replacing Fatah as the largest faction. Then the whole PLO will have to change and everything will be up for grabs."

Syrian 'bloodbath' on eve of Arab League's mission

Friday 23 December 2011

Turkey warned the violence was in stark contrast to the spirit of the deal that Syria signed up to

Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem

A team from the Arab League arrived in Syria yesterday amid an international outcry over a "bloodbath" that saw more than 200 people killed by President Bashar al-Assad's regime in just two days.

Activists have accused government forces of a major escalation in violence ahead of arrival of foreign observers. The advance delegation is tasked with arranging for the arrival of 20 foreign monitors at the weekend and eventually increasing the numbers to 500.

"They are trying to buy time, one hour after another, hoping to gain the upper hand on the ground," said an activist from the village of Kfar Owaid, the scene of one of the most brutal acts in the uprising so far with more than 100 people slaughtered in the village on Tuesday. Eyewitnesses said troops surrounded residents and activists in a valley and unleashed a barrage of rockets, tank shells, bombs and gunfire in an assault that one witness described as an "organised massacre".

At least another 19 people were killed yesterday as government troops in the city of Homs, says the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Up to 70 deserting soldiers were reportedly gunned down on Monday as they tried to flee their positions. Since the protests erupted in March, more than 5,000 people have been killed, according to the UN.

Burhan Ghalioun, leader of the Syrian National Council yesterday called on the UN to "urgently intervene". Turkey, once a close ally of Damascus, warned the violence was in stark contrast to the spirit of the Arab League deal Syria signed up to and is raising doubts about the regime's "true intentions".

The Turkish Foreign Ministry said yesterday: "We strongly condemn the Syrian leadership's policies of oppression against its own people, which are turning the country into a bloodbath." The US toughened its rhetoric after the attack on Kfar Owaid, accusing Syria of trying to "mow down" its own people. In the Syrian city of Aleppo, activists tweeted yesterday videos and photographs of thousands of government troops storming the campus firing tear gas on the fourth day of a student sit-down protest.

Elsewhere, independent news channels posted videos of Syrian soldiers who they said had defected to the anti-government side, suggesting Assad is fast losing his grip on his security forces who are transferring their weapons and expertise to the opposition.

Israel denies Anonymous cyber-attack to blame for websites failure

Israeli secret service and army websites disrupted for several hours after video threat from Anonymous hacker group

THE GUARDIAN, Monday 7 November 2011

Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

Israeli security experts have rejected claims that the Anonymous hacker group was behind the failure of several government websites on Sunday. Photograph: Rex

Israeli officials and security experts have rejected claims that a cyber-attack by the hacker group Anonymous was behind the failure of several government websites on Sunday, including those of the Mossad, the Shin Bet secret service, the Israeli army and some government ministries.

The websites were inaccessible for several hours but all were back online again by Monday.

In a YouTube video posted last Friday, Anonymous threatened to "strike back" at Israel if it continued to block vessels attempting to reach Gaza by sea. The video was released shortly after Israeli naval commandos boarded a Canadian and Irish vessel sailing to Gaza and arrested the passengers and crew.

In the YouTube message An Open Letter from Anonymous to the Government of Israel, an electronically generated voice can be heard accusing Israel of "piracy on the high seas". "Your actions are illegal, against democracy, human rights, international, and maritime laws," the statement continues. "Justifying war, murder, illegal interception, and pirate-like activities under an illegal cover of defence will not go unnoticed by us or the people of the world.

"We do not tolerate this kind of repeated offensive behaviour against unarmed civilians. If you continue blocking humanitarian vessels to Gaza or repeat the dreadful actions of 31 May 2010 against any Gaza freedom flotillas then you will leave us no choice but to strike back. Again and again, until you stop." The message ends with a warning: "Expect us."

The Israeli sites crashed about 48 hours later. An army spokesperson said it was "a coincidence" – a response dismissed by observers who noted that several Palestinian sites were hacked last week, as was the site of the Russell tribunal, currently hearing testimony in South Africa on why Israel is an apartheid state.

But Nitzan Miron, a former member of Matzov, the cyber security division of the Israeli military, responsible for defending networks from hackers, said the breakdown was "a really strange coincidence".

Miron, now chief executive of 6Scan, a website security start-up in Tel Aviv, said there had been a hardware crash rather than a software problem caused by a cyber-attack. "Nothing is impossible but it doesn't look like it [a cyber-attack]," he said. He said a decision to group all the sites in one hardware system had resulted in a chain reaction of malfunctions.

"It's all part of a project called Tehila that puts all of those sites together in one data centre. When one fell, they all fell. The back-ups failed. Hopefully next time they'll have better back-ups and this kind of thing shouldn't happen," he said. "Those were just the front-end sites. They don't contain the actual classified information."

The successful penetration of some of Israel's most prominent sites would be a major embarrassment to the Israelis, who pioneered cyber security and whose algorithms protect large swaths of computerised banking and e-commerce around the world.

Private College's Entrepreneurship Course Helps Generate Successful Start-Ups

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION October 18, 2011

By Matthew Kalman

Herzliya, Israel

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg both famously dropped out of Harvard to start wildly successful technology companies. In Israel, an innovative program is providing undergraduate students the business tools they need to become entrepreneurs, while also encouraging them to complete their degrees.

The Zell Entrepreneurship Program at the Interdisciplinary Center, a private college here, has spawned alumni-created companies that together have attracted nearly $100-million in investments in less than a decade. The Interdisciplinary Center has long sought to cut across academic silos and attract international scholars and students. The Zell program is one of its most successful efforts to distinguish itself from Israel's public-university system.

The yearlong course is free, not for credit, and open to 20 final-year undergraduates chosen from applicants in all departments at the Interdisciplinary Center. It emphasizes practical business skills, networking, and students' interaction with actual entrepreneurs.

"Forty percent of our alumni are working as founding members of start-ups or running their own business," said Liat Aaronson, executive director of the program.

(Continues here)

The Quasicrystal Laureate

Published by MIT

Nobel Prize winner Dan Shechtman discusses the potential uses for quasicrystals.

Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

• Wednesday, October 12, 2011
• By Matthew Kalman

Dan Shechtman, the Philip Tobias professor of materials engineering at the Haifa Technion Israel Institute of Technology, was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry last week for his discovery of quasicrystals—a form of matter with an atomic structure that was previously thought impossible.

In 1982, Shechtman discovered a new atomic structure when studying a rapidly cooled mix of aluminum and manganese. Unlike a regular crystal, which has an orderly, repeating structure, this material contained a pattern that never repeated. Many other kinds of quasicrystals have been discovered since then.

In 1992, the International Union of Crystallography changed the official definition of the crystal to incorporate Shechtman's discovery.

TR: Are there opportunities to invent new types of materials because of quasicrystals?

Shechtman: There is always something new in quasicrystals. There are so many people working on it around the world, so every month there are new developments. If you use a material for an application, then you need a special property that will be better than other materials—otherwise, why use this material? Quasi-periodic materials have certain properties which are unique, such as electrical properties, optical properties, hardness and nonstick properties. The direction of light through this material is different. Electrically, they behave in a very peculiar way depending on temperature. Some of these properties have been put to use.

What was the first product based on quasicrystals?

The first application was nonstick coating on frying pans and cooking utensils. If you cook on quasicrystals, your omelet will not stick to it, like Teflon. But unlike Teflon, if you use a knife in the [quasicrystal] skillet, you will ruin the knife. When you have Teflon and you use a knife, you ruin the Teflon. Ruined Teflon is not healthy. I have a frying pan which is plasma-coated with quasicrystals and it works fine. It was made by a French company, Sitram. They closed the production line because they had a few problems in the reaction of the coating with salt. If people cook with a lot of salt it will etch the quasicrystalline coating. People didn't like it, so they did not continue.

The Nobel citation says that quasicrystals are brittle but they can reinforce steel "like armor." What are the practical applications?

Sandvik, a company in Sweden, produces a precipitation-hardened stainless steel that has interesting properties. The steel is strengthened by small quasicrystalline particles and it does not corrode. It is an extremely strong steel. It is used for anything that touches the skin, for instance, razor blades or surgery tools. When a material deforms in such a way that it will not spring back, in most cases, the deformation is due to a process called dislocation glide. There are defects in the material that cause dislocations. If they are free to move, then it is easy to bend the material. But if something stops them, then it is more difficult and the material is harder and stronger. These little quasicrystalline particles impede the motion of dislocation in the material.

The citation also says quasicrystals are being used to develop heat insulation, LEDs, diesel engines, and new materials that convert heat to electricity. What new applications do you think are most promising?

Because some of these materials have a low coefficient of friction, and they have nonstick properties and are also hard, imagine what would happen if you produce quasicrystalline powder in tiny little balls by rapid solidification process, a gas-atomizing process, then you can embed the fine powders in plastic. Because these particles are strong and can withstand friction and wear, you can make gears from this plastic and the gears will not erode because of these embedded particles. It's like a protection from erosion. This can serve in ventilators and fans that have plastic gears. Also, the heat conductivity of some of these quasicrystals is very poor. It's almost an insulator. So you can coat with it and it will insulate against heat transfer.

Icosahedrite, a naturally occurring quasicrystalline mineral, has been identified in a sample from the Khatyrka River in Chukhotka, Russia. Will it be useful?

This is an important discovery, because it's the first one found in nature, but there are no practical applications. There are many, many metals, but if you think that all the metals can be used for something useful, think again. Look at construction materials. We have steel, which is based on iron, we have aluminum alloys, magnesium alloys, titanium-based alloys, nickel-based alloys, copper alloys, and that's about all, if I haven't forgotten any. What do all the other metals do? What are the applications of ytterbium? What are the applications of all the other metals? So to have an application for a material is not trivial.