Surgical Theater began in 2010 with the idea of giving neurosurgeons the ability to prepare for specific surgeries the way fighter pilots prepare for specific missions. Today, the virtual reality visualization platform is in 15 leading US hospitals, such as New York University, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, Houston Methodist, George Washington University, Mount Sinai, Stanford and Children’s National Hospital.
A medical team from Israel is on its way to the Pacific island nation of Samoa to assist overwhelmed healthcare workers trying to contain a serious measles epidemic and treat those already infected. A reported 65 people – mostly children — are reported dead from the outbreak, which has affected more than 4,400 citizens in the country of 200,000 since October. Unvaccinated children under age four are most at risk of deadly complications from the highly contagious virus.
The Middle East is among the world’s richest regions in natural resources, but despite the Persian Gulf’s ostentatious oil wealth, as a whole, the region teeters on the economic precipice. East Asia, South Asia, and even Latin America—once peers in business and development—have left the Middle East in the dust. Rather than embark on slow and steady growth, Middle Eastern economies remain trapped by boom-and-bust cycles of economic development, often a case of two steps forward, two steps back.
DrizzleX Internet-connected micrometers will automatically monitor usage, locate and report leaks and water overuse in managed residential properties. “In America, people use about four times as much water as in Israel… About 30 percent of water usage in multifamily properties is waste, adding up to $8 billion per year — aside from the cost of property damage caused by leaks and misuse.”
An Israeli invention that pulls water from air will be deployed in Nigeria following a meeting at United Nations headquarters in New York regarding the freshwater crisis in the Chad Basin of Africa. Lake Chad is the main source of drinking water for millions of people in Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria.
Imagine a growing Israeli startup whose product is deepfake videos that are based on artificial intelligence and appear to be utterly authentic. The company’s marketing efforts, according to its website, are conducted by two departments — “consulting for corporations” and “consulting for governments and politicians.” In addition, “the company helps its customers uncover their opponents’ weak spots and make them go viral.” Finally, imagine that the company describes its employees as “highly experienced men and women, graduates of elite units of the IDF intelligence branch and Israeli government intelligence agencies,” and that its technology is based on developments by these same security agencies. When you are done imagining this, it’s time to think about the private intelligence firm Black Cube.
Until a political plan is announced the economic one is unlikely to progress. Two key issues are whether Israel will cooperate in the creation of a Palestinian state, and can the Palestinians create a unified, democratic and effective government within such a state. These remain very open questions.
The developing economic crisis In the Palestinian Authority warrants a heightened alert in Israel as to a possible strategic shift in the Palestinian system. The crisis, should it prove protracted, and all the more so should it worsen, is liable to ignite several threats concerning Israel: an expansion of the circle of Palestinians involved in violent acts, specifically civil disturbances and terrorist attacks; difficulties for the PA to provide services in the civilian realm, which could deepen the Palestinian public’s dependence on Israel; Hamas’s intensified presence and tactics in face of the PA’s weakness; and compromises in the security cooperation.
The population of the Middle East has increased by nearly over 100 million, or 22 percent in the ten years preceding 2017. The population of the Arab states rose by 83 million or a quarter, while the three non-Arab states increased more slowly. Israel’s population rise was close to the Middle East average. Egypt, the largest Arab state in demographic terms, experienced a rise of 20 million or nearly 26 percent. These increases, which were among the fastest in the world, placed huge strains on the economies of the region. They required more food supplies in a region that is chronically short of water, investments in the infrastructure, and fast economic growth to generate jobs.
Israel has solved its water crisis! That’s a typical headline about Israel’s world-leading smart water management and advanced water technology. As I sipped freshly desalinated Mediterranean water at the world’s largest seawater desalination plant, the brilliance of Israel’s many-pronged approach was as clear as the H2O in my paper cup. But if residents, farmers and tourists in the Holy Land never worry about the tap running dry, that’s only because Israel invests huge amounts of money and brainpower to stay one step ahead of a worsening worldwide water crisis.
The CEO of a fast-growing American software company needed a professional assessment of his management team before taking the company public. Productivity was declining and he wanted to know what changes should be made before the IPO. Seeking swift answers, he turned to two extraordinarily accomplished Israeli women, Inbal Arieli and Shirley Schlatka.
Israeli NGO, IsraAID, is sending an emergency response team to California to help communities affected by the unprecedented fires that have killed 80 and destroyed over 13,000 homes and buildings. More than 1,300 people are still listed as missing. After a request from local communities, IsraAID is to conduct a needs assessment of the population in affected areas, promote community resilience and recovery, and distribute relief items to families currently staying in temporary accommodation after losing their homes in the fires.
How might we have to imagine the Middle East if there were a political thaw between Iran and Saudi Arabia? Could Turkey leave NATO in the near future? What would happen if security-related EU databases were successfully hacked; if South Korea were to arm itself with nuclear weapons; or if an American woman were to head the United Nations? Of course, these situations, as explored in the SWP’s latest Foresight research paper, are only hypothetical. Why address them?
S&P recently raised Israel’s credit rating to AA minus. This is a welcome development of much economic value and prestige, the result of a long process of economic improvement. From the perspective of national security, the high grade reflects Israel’s ability to grow in economic terms while simultaneously dealing with unusual security challenges.
On July 6, 2018, the first tariffs imposed by the United States and China on one another following the American initiative to reduce its trade deficit with China took effect. Prior to that, the US imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum from the European Union, Mexico, and Canada, which responded with their own tariffs.
Though written in May 2017, Paul Rivlin, a Moshe Dayan Center researcher analyzes a rich trove of data to analyze the Gaza Strip’s troubling economic character. Five major reasons are enumerated for its dilemmas: absence of investment, extraordinary high unemployment, a very young population, inability of goods and services to go in and out of the strip, and Hamas’s stranglehold on taxation and spending.
Israel is widely referred to as the “startup nation,” with more Nasdaq-listed companies than any other country in the world, aside from the US and China. Israel’s robust tech sector finds its roots in numerous factors within Israeli society, institutions, geography and geology.
Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion famously said that the future of Israel lies in the Negev, a desert located in southern Israel.
Several reports and analyses published in Israel estimate that between between 21% and 31% of Israelis are living below the poverty line.
The lifting of sanctions on Iran will allow Teheran to increase its support for terrorist groups across the region, and bolster Iran’s political and military power.
Kenneth W. Stein, “One Hundred Years of Social Change: The Creation of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,” in Laurence Silberstein (ed.), New Perspectives on Israeli History: The Early Years of the State, New York University Press,…
Kenneth Stein, “Rural Change and Peasant Destitution: Contributing Causes to the Arab Revolt in Palestine, 1936-1939,” John Waterbury and Farhad Kazemi (eds.), Peasants and Politics in the Modern Middle East, Florida International University Press (1989), pp. 143-170….
Primary sources, reputable scholarship and archival materials collectively show major communal (Arab-Jewish) socio-economic separation, factors that foreshadowed geo-spatial partition.
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