Israel Beyond Politics - July 2004

Israeli archeological excavation sites help educate American students
By Mark Schulman

Indiana Jones would have never let travel bans and terror threats stand in the way of a good archeological dig - especially if the field work was among some 35,000 known archaeological sites in Israel. That was the conclusion drawn by dozens of American volunteers, students and amateur archeology buffs who joined their Israeli counterparts and additional volunteers from Europe at eleven major excavations being conducted in Israel this summer.

By and large, security concerns and dwindling funding for large-scale digs have kept many American institutions and universities away, including hundreds of students and volunteers who are an essential part of any archeological project. But this year, the wannabe discoverers are back with a vengeance - scattered throughout the country with trowel and pickaxe in hand in an attempt to make sense of the country's rich layers of history hidden beneath the ground.

"It's good to be back again in the field," said Dr. Ron Tappy, professor of bible and archaeology at the Pittsburgh Theological and director of excavations at Tell Zeitah (Tel Zayit in Hebrew), an ancient village believed to be biblical Libnah in ancient Judah. "We had about 45 professional staff and volunteers this summer, but I could have used twice as many people. Hopefully we'll see more come out and dig with us next year."

Excavated for the first time in 1999, volunteers at Tell Zeitah have discovered a large Late Bronze Age public building or palace and have studied a significant destruction level from the ninth century BCE that is thought to be associated with an Aramean invasion. Other finds include artifacts that date from the mid-eighth century BCE, the time just prior to King Hezekiah, the prophet Isaiah, and the rise of Assyrian influence in the region.

Meanwhile, several miles away, another dig is attracting the kind of numbers Tappy has been dreaming about. Located in the Ayalah Valley between the Judean foothills leading up to Jerusalem and the coastal plain, Tell es-Safi (Tel Tsafit in Hebrew) is identified by most scholars as the home of Goliath, of David and Goliath fame, and one of the five ancient Philistine cities that also includes Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron and Gaza. This link to the biblical past, together with the discovery of rich early Bronze Age remains, a ninth century BCE destruction level that corresponds with the conquests of Aramean King Hazael of Damascus (2 Kings 12:18), and a unique siege trench from the Iron Age, has attracted many the world over.

"For several years overseas volunteers were simply not coming," said Dr. Aren Maeir, Senior Lecturer at Bar Ilan University's Institute of Archeology and Director of the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project, which has been excavating the biblical Philistine city of Gath since 1996. "But, this year the amount of volunteers and students on my dig jumped substantially to about 100 at one time compared with 30 a couple of years ago. It seems that the people who are interested in archeology have come to the realization that the [political] situation won't change any time soon and they're going to come anyway."

This year's dig includes a group of American students from Yeshiva University in New York and from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as Israeli students from Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv. In addition there are about 50 additional volunteers, mostly from the US, but some from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and even Ukraine.

Settled almost continuously from the Chalcolithic period (fifth century BCE) until the 1940s, Tell es-Safi is one of the largest and most important pre-classical archeologist sites in Israel, occupying some 400-500 dunams (about 100 acres). With so much to uncover, students and volunteers remain an integral part of the excavation.

"It's brutal hard work, but it's fun and I'm learning a lot about the history and practical field work," said Thomas Beyl, an Ancient Near East Studies graduate student from Hebrew Union College, who was busy clearing a grid site under grueling hot summer temperatures.

Trying to avoid working long hours in the sun, volunteers dig, shovel and haul baskets of earth from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m., with the rest of the day spent learning about various excavation processes, such as analyzing pottery shards, and attending lectures about the site and Israeli archaeology in general. "If everything works out I hope to return next year with some of my HUC colleagues to manage a section," Beyl added.

Also helping on site is Michael and Kathy Pincus of Boca Raton, Florida, who came to Israel to assist their daughter in ground-penetrating radar (GPR) work, a geophysical method that uses high frequency pulsed electromagnetic waves to acquire subsurface information. GPR is often used for oil and mineral exploration, but is also useful in locating buried objects.

"GPR can help archeologists make strategic decisions about where to start digging and where not to," said Jessie Pincus, a PhD student of geology and archeology at the University of Miami, with plans on moving to Israel later this year to finish her degree at Bar Ilan University.

"Trying to bring technology towards archeology into the future, that's what I'm about," Pincus said. "The technology can be applied anywhere, but I love Israel and want to apply it here."

Using GPR Jessie and her family are currently helping Tell es-Safi excavation director Aren Maeir and his staff find the continuation of a massive trench surrounding the site. The trench, believed by Maeir to be an Aramean method of siege at the time measures five meters deep, four meters wide and is over two kilometers long.

"This is an astounding logistical operation and one of the most interesting features that we have here, there is no parallel to it," said Maeir. "We will continue to excavate here to learn more about the period in which this trench was built."

It is finds like this that many archeologists hope will get volunteers excited and make them want to come back again and again.

Courtesy http://www.israel21c.org/

Israeli company tests long-lasting nose drop vaccine for the flu
By David Brinn

July 19, 2004 - An Israeli company has developed a revolutionary nose drop vaccine for influenza which promises to protect people of all ages for five years against all present and future strains of the flu.

The patented vaccine - developed by startup BiondVax - has completed successful laboratory testing on mice and is now securing funds for clinical tests on humans. The vaccine is based on 20 years of research by Weizmann Institute of Science Professor Ruth Arnon, who earlier in her career was a senior member of the team that developed the breakthrough drug Copaxone for multiple sclerosis.

Conventional flu injections are good for only one season, as the virus mutates every year. According to Isaac Devash, chairman of BiondVax, their new vaccine is not dependent on variable strains, so it will be long-lasting and more protective. Only a single drop need be inserted in the nose to be effective, he says. "It's a quantum leap in technology," he said. "It's a totally different concept from other vaccinations."

Instead of  identifying the surface of the virus and developing a vaccine to combat it, Prof. Arnon decided to look conceptually at the virus - beneath the surface - to see if there are particular elements that don't change, and then make a vaccine out of those parts which are universal in all viruses.

Devash said that Arnon's lab in Rehovot tested the vaccine on "human mice," - rodents in which a human immune system (white blood cells) have been introduced.

"The results were staggering. The humanized mice were vaccinated and then attacked by different strains of influenza. All of the vaccinated mice stayed alive, while the control group of mice who didn't receive the vaccination all died," he said. This success rate among the 'human mice' predicts a high likelihood of success in human clinical trials, Devash added.

Arnon, 71, is a world-famous scientist whose list of prizes and honorary degrees includes the French Legion of Honor, the Wolf Prize for Medicine and the Israel Prize for Medicine. She's published has published over 400 articles on immunology.

After all the years of research and testing, Devash is optimistic that the funding will be found for the clinical trials and that they will prove to be successful. And he looks forward to the day when a five-year flu vaccine from Israel will be distributed around the world saving lives.

Courtesy http://www.israel21c.org/

Israeli research targets terrorists on the Net
By Allison Kaplan Sommer

July 19, 2004 - Investigation of the tragic events of September 11, 2001 made it clear that terrorist groups are increasingly using the Internet as a communication and propaganda tool where they can safely communicate with their affiliates, coordinate action plans, raise funds, and introduce new supporters into their networks.

This became evident to world security agencies from the large number of web sites run by different terrorist organizations though the URLs and geographical locations of these web sites are frequently moved around the globe.

To combat this rising tide, Israeli researchers are working on ways to make communication more difficult for terrorists. One of the leaders in the field is Ben-Gurion University Professor Mark Last who is conducting breakthrough research on fighting terror in cyberspace at his Software Quality Engineering/Data Mining) Laboratory on the Beersheva campus.

"The Internet helps terrorists a great deal and makes their life easier in many senses - because it is really a very difficult problem to find something suspicious in the sea of traffic to Internet. Access to the Internet is relatively easy worldwide and affordable worldwide, and it is easy to use while concealing your identity," Last said. "The more we work, the more we learn details of the extent of terrorist use and misuse of the Internet, the websites they are maintaining for their supporters, for conducting illegal international transactions, sending messages to each other and other kinds of activities."

In his lab, Last and his team are working towards the goal of achieving the ability to predict future activities and targets by searching Web pages, e-mails and other on-line data. His lab at BGU is working to develop and implement a prototype system for detection of terrorist-related or other criminal activities characterized by abnormal patterns of information access and use on the Internet.

Last initiated the idea two years ago to take established ideas of data mining and computational analysis and apply techniques to the information on the Internet, especially on the Internet traffic. Using this technique, he believes, eventually terrorist internet activity will be able to be detected, even if that activity is taking place in the midst of a great deal of innocent activity at an Internet cafe, a company, or a university.

Courtesy http://www.israel21c.org/

Traveling far to "heal the world"
Americans head to Israel to attend innovative new medical school

July 12, 2004 - At a time when many Americans are avoiding travel to the Middle East altogether, an intrepid group of young people are heading to Israel with noble intentions and a plan to remain there for three years.

These committed men and women are the members of the Class of 2008 of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Faculty of Health Sciences Medical School for International Health in collaboration with Columbia University Medical Center, a new medical school that expands upon the traditional medical curriculum to emphasize global health and healthcare for underserved populations across the globe.

The Class of 2008 of the Medical School for International Health includes men and women who originally hail from the United States, Canada, and India. Although their backgrounds differ, they have one thing in common - a desire to understand the impact of globalization on healthcare in different societies and a willingness to bring high-quality medical care to those who need it most.

Beyond the basic medical sciences and clinical rotations found in American medical schools, students in the Medical School for International Health learn about humanitarian emergencies, healthcare economics, disaster relief, infectious diseases, and nutrition. They also complete coursework in epidemiology, medical anthropology, and cross-cultural communication and spend two months doing hands-on fieldwork in India, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nepal or Peru.

The 26 students in the Class of 2008 were selected on the basis of outstanding academic credentials and certain unteachable qualities, including leadership, cooperation, compassion, and commitment to the community. Their prior experiences range from volunteering with the Peace Corps in Honduras, to setting up a free dental clinic in El Salvador, to helping orphans in Romania.”

“Ben-Gurion University is an ideal place to learn cross-cultural medicine,” notes Carmi Margolis, M.D., program director for the Medical School for International Health at Ben-Gurion University. “Much of our students’ learning takes place outside of the classroom, as students interact with patients from a wide mix of groups, including indigenous Bedouin tribes and recent immigrants from North Africa, the former Soviet Union and South America.”

Israel's future looks greener
By Barry Davis  

July 11, 2004 - As Earth Day was celebrated around the globe this spring, Israeli environmental organizations and academic bodies took pride in shining the spotlight the country's ecological issues and achievements.

There are literally dozens of highly active green groups and organizations in Israel, both small and large, from Clean Air, to People Against Radiation, Environmental Bio-Architecture in Israel, the Tel Aviv Bike Support Group, the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, and Adam, Teva V'Din (Israel Union for Environmental Defense).

In honor of Earth Day, many of the leaders of the environmental community convened at a conference at Tel Aviv University chaired by TAU's Porter School of Environmental Studies (PSES).

Chief Scientist at the Israeli Ministry of the Environment Dr. Eli Stern offered an overview of the government's efforts in green topics. "There is an enormous amount of work being undertaken on environmental issues in Israel - both by the Ministry of the Environment and various green organizations," said Stern.

Despite his gargantuan workload Stern was upbeat about the way environmental matters are developing in Israel. "We have a lot of areas to address, from the quality of the water we drink to radiation from cellular communications facilities and noise levels. But we are making good progress. For example, despite the large growth in the number of cars on our roads, pollution levels are increasing at a far slower rate that you would have expected. And, of course, we are investing heavily in trains. That also helps."

Stern also referred to intensive efforts being made to clean up Israel's waterways. "The Kishon River, for example, is much cleaner now than it was. There are far less heavy metals and other organic contaminants there today."

As a small country with a growing population and developing industrial base the issue of green spaces - critical to the quality of air Israelis breathe - is also being addressed. "Together with the Ministry of the Interior's Planning Administration, we are setting out policy outlines to ensure that open spaces are safeguarded," continued Stern. "We are also taking measures to protect our beaches." The latter objective is being furthered by legislation, currently making progress in the Knesset, to outlaw all construction on Israel's beaches.

Dana Milstein and Prof. Avital Gasith from TAU's Institute for Nature Conservation Research enlightened the conference audience as to how they are aiming to reduce pollution in one of Israel's main waterways, the Yarkon River, that flows through Israel's most heavily populated Gush Dan region near Tel Aviv and into the metropolis.

"The basis for our project stems from the fact that Israel has a water shortage problem," explained Gasith. "We have short winters, a growing population and rising water consumption. We live in a region that is naturally green in the winter and spring, and dry in the summer. We, in Israel, use water for agriculture and for our gardens. We turn yellow landscapes into green ones, and there is fierce competition for water use between industry, agriculture and domestic needs. The losers in this race are the natural bodies for water collection, like rivers."

The Yarkon River has been one of those losers for some time now and the drop in water flow has resulted in reduced water volumes and decreased ability to dilute pollution that finds its way into the river. Milstein and Gasith's solution to this problem is to adapt the idea of wetlands, already used successfully in the United States and Europe, to filter polluting elements with vegetation. The Yarkon River will incorporate an innovative waste treatment method called electro-flocculation, devised by Prof. Avner Avidan from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The PSES, which was founded in December 2002, adopts an integrated multidisciplinary approach looking at scientific, technological, social, political, economic and ethical aspects of ecological areas. The school collaborates with municipal authorities, and government and non-government authorities, and has struck up a fruitful partnership with the Italian government.

PSES head Prof. Zev Levin is optimistic about the future of Israel's environment. "We are getting the word out there, to teachers, students, companies and the general public. Green issues were central to many campaigns in the last municipal elections and it wouldn't have been possible to establish something like the PSES twenty years ago. Things are definitely improving."

Courtesy http://www.israel21c.org/

Helping Israeli Bedouin by identifying mutant genes
By David Margolis  

July 4, 2004 - Dr. Ohad Birk is treating genetic disorders while hunting down the genes that cause them. While serving the entire population of some 500,000 in southern Israel, the main focus of his work is with the nearly 140,000 Bedouin of Israel's Negev region, who suffer a particularly high incidence of genetic disorders. And while relieving their suffering, the work of Birk's multidisciplinary team also has applications well beyond the country's southern desert.

The Negev Bedouin are a relatively isolated population, and they have a very high proportion of consanguineous marriages, with some two-thirds of individuals married to first or second cousins. As an unfortunate consequence, the Bedouin show a high rate of genetically-determined neurological, skeletal, eye, cardiac, gastro-intestinal, skin and eye diseases. There's even "hereditary infertility" - not a contradiction in terms, explains Birk, acting director of the Genetics Institute at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva and head of the Ben-Gurion University's Human Molecular Genetics Lab, but a matter of statistics, since if both parents carry the defective gene, perhaps a quarter of their children will suffer the defect.

While treating these diseases, Birk, at the head of a combined research and clinical team of 45 people, offers the Bedouin pre-marital carrier testing and pre-natal diagnosis, as well as support in educational programs for high school and religious teachers that increase awareness and prevention of genetic problems. An increasing number of Bedouin now request pre-natal diagnosis, because their religious practice allows abortion through the first four months of pregnancy. There is also growing interest in this community in pre-marital genetic testing, similar to that done in the ultra-orthodox Jews.

However, some illnesses show up too late for abortion, notes Birk, while mental retardation does not reveal itself until after birth. While much progress has been made, he adds, continued inbreeding (and a birth rate of more than 7 children per family) increases the incidence of common defects and creates new ones. Birk notes that changing traditional marriage and family patterns is a slow process.

Beyond treatment and education, Birk's research group is aimed at long-term prevention by hunting down the genes responsible for these illnesses - painstaking work that requires first characterizing the physical condition, then preparing a DNA "workup" in tandem with a complete history of the affected individual's extended family. A "genetic linkage analysis" then aims to identify which group of genes harbors the specific defect responsible for each specific condition. Further investigation, including comparison of the sequencing of the target genes to normal sequencing, allows Birk's team to determine if the patient has a gene "miscoding" - an actual mutation of the gene.

In fact, working in close collaboration with many physicians both in southern Israel and throughout the country, Birk's laboratory has now become a center for research of genetic diseases in inbred communities throughout Israel.

This tremendous effort of prevention, treatment and investigation is sure to bring benefits not only to other Arab and Bedouin communities in the Middle East but also to Europe, with its large Muslim populations. Moreover, studies of this inbred population allow a unique opportunity also in identifying novel drug targets for complex common diseases such as epilepsy and morbid obesity. In fact, Birk is now expanding the focus of his genetic research to include diabetes, whose increase in the Bedouin community mirrors a significant worldwide spike in incidence.

Courtesy http://www.israel21c.org/