Israel in the News Feb/Mar 1993
The Right Formula
from The Jewish Week
The proportion of immigrant scientists has risen over the past few months from 15 to 25 of every 1,000 olim. Absorption Minister Yair Tsaban said the increase could be attributed to the deteriorating economic situation in the Commonwealth of Independent States and to the success in absorbing immigrant scientists here. Some 57 percent of the immigrant scientists who arrived since 1989—3,750 people—have been placed in jobs in their field or related fields with the ministry’s help, he added.
Israeli Population Figures
from The Wall Street Journal
Israel’s population totals 5,165,000, up 2.5% from a year ago. Jews from the former Soviet Union make up the country’s largest ethnic group, with 617,000 people, surpassing the Moroccan community’s 500,000.
Medical Evidence
from The Jerusalem Post
Canaanite doctors performed operations on children more than 4,200 years ago, according to evidence discovered at an excavation in the Negev town of Dimonah. Examination of a skull found at the site showed it to be that of an 8-year-old boy … The patient apparently died during an operation known as trephination. Bronze Age surgeons using metal scrapers opened an oblong, matchbox-size hole in the top of the skull to either release pressure or drain an infection, according to Joe Zias, an anthropologist with the authority.
Poll: Germany’s Jews feel threatened by neo-Nazis
from The Jerusalem Post
Germany’s small Jewish community feels threatened by the rise of the extreme right since German unification in 1990.
A poll published recently said 45% of the Jews in Germany believe democracy is strongly endangered. Only 10% of non-Jewish Germans share this fear.
The study by Cologne University showed that “Jews in western Germany do not see antisemitism in the country as a harmless peripheral phenomenon in a generally tolerant society. They see it as a serious political problem which for them poses a potential threat.”
Suspected rightists recently firebombed two Jewish memorials in former Nazi concentration camps and desecrated other sites commemorating the Holocaust.
“Nearly one-third of those questioned said they were convinced that German antisemitism will increase further. Only a minority believes anti-Jewish prejudices will die out in Germany,” the study said.
U.N. Taboo Broken
from The Jewish Week
The 30-year-old taboo against Israeli representatives being elected to senior positions in U.N. bodies was broken when Pnina Herzog, deputy director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Health, was unanimously named representative of the European region in the World Health Organization’s executive council at WHO’s recent annual meeting in Copenhagen. Herzog, head of the international relations department in the Health Ministry, has many friends in international organizations. Highly respected in her own right, she is the widow of the late diplomat Ya’acov Herzog and sister-in-law of Israeli President Chaim Herzog, a former ambassador to the U.N.
It’s a Big Hello to the 20th Century
from The Jewish Week
Bezek, the Israeli telephone company, has installed the first phone in the Bedouin village of El Ziadne, north of Beersheva. As the village is without electricity, the phone is joined to the exchange by a radio connection powered by solar cells.
