Cancer

I'm back from Ohio.

My sister-in-law has pancreatic cancer.

We found out at the beginning of last week and started making plans to visit. We go to Ohio at least once a year, taking turns driving. We were not sure how long we were going to be there, though we are planning to be going back to visit over the next few months.

My wife has a closely knit family: before her mother passed away a few years ago, my mother-in-law, her husband, one of their daughters and their daughter's daughter--my niece--all lived together.

My mother was confined to a wheelchair with an oxygen tank. After I married her daughter, my mother-in-law started to lose weight--I used to joke with her that I was not sure if I should take that as a sign of approval or not--and her doctor said that if she lost enough, he would be able to repair her shoulders, both of which were broken. He never was able to and she could not raise her hands above her head. For a while, she was able to walk without the wheelchair or oxygen, with some help.

She suffered a number of strokes and heart attacks. She died twice and was revived. Once she suffered from an embolism. It just so happened that at that time a specialist was at the hospital demonstrating a procedure he had developed. He performed the procedure on her and she recovered.

One time we were visiting her in intensive care--she looked awful and was connected by tubes and wires to machines. While talking to her, I mentioned the word 'lumber': for no apparent reason, she burst out in uncontrollable laughter. Lights started blinking and  alarms went off. A nurse ran into the room. When I tried to explain, she gave me a very dirty look. The laughing must have done her good, because my mother-in-law recovered. 

She lived long past the time her doctors had given her.

My father-in-law was always pushing my mother-in-law in her wheelchair.

He has a broken back.

My father-in-law had a farm, and after selling it became a contractor: he fell off a roof and broke his back.

After he was able to walk again--he went back to contracting.

He fell of a roof a second time--he finally retired.

Since that time, he has built for my wife and me bookshelves, cabinets, a standing closet...basically he has done more with a broken back than I could possibly do.

My sister-in-law, the one with cancer, has epilepsy.

She gets seizures, occasionally grand Mal seizures.

Her daughter has cerebral palsy, with other complications.

For years, the 4 of them lived together.

I would think they had every reason to feel miserable--both for themselves and for living with each other.

They had every reason to complain--but they did not.

They were a family, and I never felt like an intruder or uncomfortable staying with them.

Like I said, my mother-in-law passed away a few years ago.

My sister-in-law has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer: she has been told that it has progressed so far that chemotherapy and radiation therapy will not help.

That leaves my father-in-law and my niece.

Together, here was a family that was greater than the sum of its parts--exponentially so.

In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote:

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

I am no longer so sure Tolstoy was right about happy families.
And the key is not how families are unhappy, but how they deal with it--how they fight it, and in that regard families in general, and this one in particular, is different.

I'm not counting my father-in-law and niece out.

Technorati Tag: Cancer and Family.

Off To Ohio

Leaving now to visit family--blogging will be sporadic, if even that.

Kosher Cooking Carnival #39--Almost Purim Edition--Is Up!

me-ander is hosting this month's Kosher Cooking Carnival #39: Almost Purim!

Check out the posts from around the JBlogosphere about everything Kosher.

Next month’s edition will be hosted by Material Maidel of Kosher Cuisine fame. Please send in any suitable posts you write or see via blog carnival. And if you'd like to host an edition, please email shilohmuse at yahoo dot com

Technorati Tag: Kosher Cooking Carnival and Kosher and KCC.

The Mystery Of Iran's Jews: Not Such A Mystery (Updated))

Roger Cohen, writing for The New York Times, believes

Still a mystery hovers over Iran’s Jews. It’s important to decide what’s more significant: the annihilationist anti-Israel ranting, the Holocaust denial and other Iranian provocations — or the fact of a Jewish community living, working and worshipping in relative tranquillity.

Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words, but I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran — its sophistication and culture — than all the inflammatory rhetoric.

While it is not clear towards which facts Cohen is more biased, Holocaust denial in Iran is more than just inflammatory rhetoric--and when a government-financed TV show appeared in Iran that allegedly admitted that the Holocaust took place, people lauded this sympathetic program that could not have appeared with the government's permission.

AllahPundit had a post that indicated that praise for the program was badly misplaced:

Reader Niko K. writes below that a Spiegel story on the miniseries sharply contradicts the AP’s account. So sharply, in fact, that I’m wondering now if the AP story is a deliberate whitewash. Writes Niko:

The article has it all wrong, and also the Wall Street Journal article that appeared earlier.

Mohammed Reza Kazemi cleared up the matter in a recent SPIEGEL article (link in German only, sorry). Main points:

* the major point of the series is that it was allegedly the German Jews themselves who collaborated with Hitler to kill those Jews who opposed the re-settlement of Palestine

* for example, a plot line shows that a Jewish researcher is in possession of documents that prove the connection between Hitler and Zionists

* the credits of each episode feature the work of anti-Semite Roger Garaudy as a “historical source”

* “historical adviser” to the series is Holocaust denier Abdollah Shahbazi who openly admits in his blog that he’s a denier

* director and screenwriter Hassan Fatthi alleged to SPIEGEL that according to “historical evidence” a majority of Hitler’s victims were those who opposed the re-settlement of Palestine

Cohen takes his job as an apologist for Iran very seriously, resolving the contradiction between Iranian threats and rhetoric with "Iranian warmth":

That may be because I’m a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran. Or perhaps I was impressed that the fury over Gaza, trumpeted on posters and Iranian TV, never spilled over into insults or violence toward Jews. Or perhaps it’s because I’m convinced the “Mad Mullah” caricature of Iran and likening of any compromise with it to Munich 1938 — a position popular in some American Jewish circles — is misleading and dangerous.

...Double standards don’t work anymore; the Middle East has become too sophisticated. One way to look at Iran’s scurrilous anti-Israel tirades is as a provocation to focus people on Israel’s bomb, its 41-year occupation of the West Bank, its Hamas denial, its repetitive use of overwhelming force. Iranian language can be vile, but any Middle East peace — and engagement with Tehran — will have to take account of these points.

But there are other points to take into account as well--for instance, what Iranian Jews say about Iran after they leave. In 2007 Yedioth Ahronoth ran a Hebrew article by Ariela Ringel Hoffman featuring interviews with Jews who had escaped from Iran, which I summarized in a post: Iranian Jews Speak Out!

o Hoffman describes the situation [minimal Jewish emigration] as a conflict between fear of life in Iran and the ability to adapt and lead a normal life there; between the worry of leaving everything behind and the desire to lead a new life in Israel.

o According to Jeff Kaye, an official of the Jewish Agency, there good reason to worry about the fate of the Jews of Iran--the same reasons that pushed Israel to bring Jews out of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq to Israel or the US exist also in Iran.

o One Iranian Jew interviewed by Hoffman said that Jews in Iran know they are sitting on a powder keg--at least half of them think that either Israel or the US will attack Iran's nuclear reactors. And when they do, the Jews of Iran will pay the price. Even without encouragement from the government, the Iranians on the street will take it out on the Jews.

o Another Iranian Jew tells Hoffman that it was not the threat of war that brought him to Israel, but the desire to live as a Jew. "There, it is difficult to keep Mitzvot, to keep Kosher, to pray and to learn about Judasim. On Shabbat the children have to go to school--everything there is more difficult.

o In Iran, serving in the army is mandatory. Many Jews avoid service by paying someone off--something that is not limited to the Jews alone. One who ended up serving in the army recounts how the Iranians who served were religious and treated him like someone impure, and gave him the hardest jobs. Though service is for 24 months, after 20 months he got disgusted and deserted.

o The problem is that the Iranian Jews don't want to leave, I say to him [Yossi Shraga]. That is true, he says--they may not say it, but that does not free us. This is similar to the situation the Jews faced in Europe before the rise of the Nazis. Jews have the tendency, says Shraga, to believe that everything will turn out all right. But back then, there was no Jewish state, no government. Today there is, and we will not be able to forgive ourselves if something happens.

Read the entire post.

Some of those interviewed said that conditions in Iran have improved; some thought conditions were not so terrible--and then there is one interviewee (those interviewed are not mentioned by their actual names out of fear for family left behind) who said

"I can tell you, based both on personal experience and on what I hear from friends, that there are places [in Iran] where Muslims have already divided among themselves the homes and property of their Jewish neighbors. They say that if there will be a war, the first thing they will do is slaughter the Jews."

Before bragging about "a bias toward facts over words," perhaps Cohen should actually talk to Iranian Jews who are free to express how they feel.

UPDATED: From Michael Rubin:

I'm familiar with the synagogue and attended it when I lived in Isfahan. I chatted with some of the university-aged students who had taken shelter in an attached guesthouse because, as Jews, they were beat up in the university dormitories. Men and women both referred to the Jews' representative in the Parliament as a flunky for the regime, and would not discuss problems or issues when he was around. Several would say one thing in the synagogue, but when we went to parks on took walks through the city, they would bend over backwards to make clear that they cannot talk freely in the synagogue since the walls have ears. The same sentiment was expressed at synagogues in Tehran and Shiraz. Cohen, however, talks to him as the authority and takes his word that he is not a quisling. True, Jews are better of in Iran than in many neighboring countries, but there is a reason why their number has dropped by 80% over the last three decades. Cohen simply appears on a propaganda tour; parachuting in, an eager recepticle for his regime minders. It should not surprise that his column now graces the pages of the regime's mouth piece, The Tehran Times.

You'd think after the Grey Lady would have learned her lesson after, a few years ago, the New York Times correspondent visited Tehran and quoted a University of Tehran professor talking about domestic protests. The correspondent was simply unaware that the man he quoted was known to every academic who went into Iran as the person in charge of 'minding' foreign visitors to Iran.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

[Hat tip: Best of the Web]

Technorati Tag: Iran and Jews and Holocaust and Anti-Semitism.

For 'The People Of The Book,' Jewish Culture Should Be About More Than Just A Bagel

Writing for The New Republic, Peter Miller describes how, upon entering a special exhibit

a sanctuary of civilization, was available to the roughly 10,000 people who in recent weeks packed the tenth-floor galleries at Sotheby's in New York to view the 13,000 books of the Valmadonna Trust collection. They were vouchsafed a vision as hallucinatory as any in Borges.

This astounding collection was begun at the turn of the century, but for the past seven decades it has been in the hands and in the London home of the Antwerp-born Jack Lunzer, a dealer in industrial diamonds by day and a lover of Hebrew books by night. During these decades it has grown from a small collection focused on 16th-century Italian Hebrew imprints--in some sense a golden age of Hebrew printing--to one that has taken the entirety of the Jewish historical experience as its purview, "books that are not only rare but truly significant for illustrating and understanding the Jewish diaspora."

But more than being an astounding collection of Jewish books from centuries past, it is also a testimony to Jewish communities that once flourished and have since disappeared--in more ways than one:

And there is still another sense, proved at Sotheby's recently, in which the people are gone. The visitors who snaked along the ropes set up in the auction house's lobby and out the door and up the street were quite obviously Jews. Some wore the anachronistic dress of early modern Polish nobility, others the modern yeshiva fashions of Washington Heights and Brooklyn. But almost none of them, at least when I was visiting, had uncovered heads. What does this mean? In 1990, a scholar of modern American Jewry wrote a book about orthodox Jews entitled New York's Jewish Jews. Well, if books are the heritage of the Jews, then don't they belong to non-religious Jews as well? (I leave aside the bigger and even more important questions of why a show of this magnitude would attract only Jews, or what it would mean if the majority of the visitors were not Jews.)

Where were the non-religious Jews who are mesmerized by the traditional Jewish bookshelf? Is the demography of the audience for a high-end show of Hebrew books, like that of rallies in support of the State of Israel, revealing an ever greater split between identifying with things Jewish and identifying as Jewish? If it is true--and, I agree, this is a big "if," which of course requires million-dollar studies by foundations and sociologists before it can be discussed with all due seriousness--then we may be witnessing the deterioration of the idea that one can be "culturally Jewish." For if the Valmadonna Library documents anything, it is the culture of Jews, the Jewish culture of Jews, over the last five hundred years.

This opens what Jewish culture means today, where it is likely to be associated most easily with Jewish food than with anything else. At a time when American Jews will proclaim their concern for Israel--but list it low among their considerations when at the voting booth, just what is it that binds Jews today?

Today, 'Jewish culture' is more likely to refer to tastes and manners than to knowledge and values--and when it does refer to values, it more often refers to liberal values that have more to do with politics than Judaism.

What is happening to The People of the Book?

Technorati Tag: Jews and Judaism and Valmadonna Trust collection.

Chas Freeman Appointment: Mearsheimer & Walt Go To Washington

No word yet on whether proposed Charmian of the National Intelligence Council, Chas Freeman, has an autographed copy of The Israel Lobby, but as Marty Peretz writes:

But Freeman’s real offense (and the president’s if he were to appoint him) is that he has questioned the loyalty and patriotism of not only Zionists and other friends of Israel, the great swath of American Jews and their Christian countrymen, who believed that the protection of Zion is at the core of our religious and secular history, from the Pilgrim fathers through Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. And how has he offended this tradition? By publishing and peddling the unabridged John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, with panegyric and hysteria [through the Middle East Policy Council of which he is president]. If Freeman believes that this book is the truth he can’t be trusted by anyone, least of all Barack Obama. I can’t believe that Obama wants to appoint someone who is quintessentially an insult to the patriotism of some many of his supporters, me included. [emphasis added]

Is the selection of Freeman another example of Obama's vetting committee at work? We have already seen that if enough questionable appointments are made, some will get through--whether past actual committess or just the general public. Is there any reason to hope that Freeman will be thrown under the bus?

Gabriel Shoenfeld notices a disconnect in the choice of Freeman:

Unsurprisingly, Mr. Freeman has views about Middle East policy that differ rather sharply from those held by supporters of the state of Israel. More surprisingly, they also differ rather sharply from the views -- or at least the views stated during the campaign -- of the president who has invited him to serve.

While President Obama speaks of helping the people of Israel "search for credible partners with whom they can make peace," Mr. Freeman believes, as he said in a 2007 address to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, that "Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them." The primary reason America confronts a terrorism problem today, he continued, is "the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation that is about to mark its fortieth anniversary and shows no sign of ending."

Pundits have written that as Obama is required to make actual decisions, his true beliefs and policies will become more and more clear. Nevertheless, the choice of someone like Freeman, who among other things defends China's actions in the Tiananmen Square in massacre in 1989.

Schoenfeld concludes:

If someone with such extreme views has been appointed to such a sensitive position, is this a reflection of Mr. Obama's true predilections, or is it proof positive that the Obama White House has never gotten around to vetting its own vetters?

Either way, if those complaining loudest about politicized intelligence have indeed placed a China-coddling Israel basher in charge of drafting the most important analyses prepared by the U.S. government, it is quite a spectacle. The problem is not that Mr. Freeman will shade National Intelligence Estimates to suit the administration's political views. The far more serious danger is that he will steer them to reflect his own outlandish perspectives and prejudices.

Read the whole thing.

More at Memeorandum

[Hat tip: Jennifer Rubin]

Technorati Tag: Obama and Chas Freeman .

The Threat To Israel From Dubai Is On A Par With Iran

Laura Goldman, who worked on Wall Street for 25 years and now owns her own firm, LSG capital, in Tel Aviv writes on Pajamas Media about The Danger From Dubai:

Although it was reprehensible that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) refused to give Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer an entry visa for a WTA-sanctioned tournament and the world stood idly by, there might be a silver lining to the whole episode. It could serve as a wake-up call to remind the world of the dangers that the UAE poses to Israel — while most of the international attention is focused on Iran.

Goldman notes that while the threat from Dubai is financial, it is no less serious a threat to Israel and its economy:

While it makes for great newspaper headlines when Netanyahu proclaims that “it is 1939 all over again” with regard to Iran, I am equally concerned that landmark days in Israeli history like February 17, 1982, will stop happening. February 17 was the date that the first Israeli company, Teva Pharmaceuticals, went public on the Nasdaq exchange. This exchange is now partially Arab controlled. If the Arab boycott were extended to the Nasdaq, the Israeli economy would lose an important source of capital.

The threat is real when you look at the numbers--and it has nothing to do with Sharia law and Islamic finance:

Where does the Dubai purchase of the Nasdaq leave Israel? The total market capitalization of Israeli companies on the NASDAQ is approximately $50 billion (pre market crash). Israel is the number one foreign issuer with a total of 90 companies. The Nasdaq, in appreciation of the value of Israeli companies on the exchange, currently defrays some of the cost of listing for Israeli companies. In addition, the Nasdaq holds Israeli Company Day to introduce Israeli stocks to institutional investors. With Arab owners, it is doubtful that these activities will continue during flush times.

The logical Israeli response would be to turn to the London Stock Exchange (LSE). But we will be blocked there also. In a related transaction, the Nasdaq sold Borse Dubai a 28% stake in the LSE. The government of Qatar also bought a 24% stake in the LSE at the same time. Israeli companies now face the prospect of listing on an exchange that is almost 50% owned by Arabs.

...Some may underestimate the threat of Arab ownership of the exchanges to Israel. Hi-tech is Israel’s oil. Israel’s version of oil needs capital to operate. Although there are several ways to access capital, the public stock markets have proven the most effective at maximizing the value of businesses in Israel. The effect of the reduced access to capital will not be limited to the hi-tech sector in Israel. If hi-tech in Israel catches a sniffle, the Israeli government budget comes down with the flu. [emphasis added]

The threat from Dubai goes beyond the exchanges--there are other puchases that Dubai has made whose import apparently is going unnoticed:

The bad news from Dubai is not finished. The government of Abu Dubai purchased a 7.5% stake in the private equity firm the Carlyle Group, well-known for its ownership of defense contractors. The many defense contractors controlled by the Carlyle Group could refuse to use Israeli subcontractors in deference to Abu Dhabi. In 2006, defense exports from Israel totaled $4.4 billion. Even worse, the government of Dubai could block the IDF from purchasing weapons vital to Israel’s defense from these military suppliers. They will also have the direct access to purchase them for their own defense.

The Carlyle group, with a Jewish David Rubinstein at the helm, is already participating in the Arab boycott without recriminations from the rest of the world. Carlyle has established a Middle East fund to invest in the region that will exclude investment in Israel. The New York Times sanguinely reports that sources close to the fundraising for this fund say that it would be next to impossible to raise money from other Middle East countries if Israel was one of the countries in the Middle East fund.

Read the whole thing.

The threat may not manifest until the return to a better economy, but when the pressure will be applied profit will undoubtedly precede principle and the threat will become very real.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Israel and Dubai and NASDAQ and LSE.

A Test To See How Serious The World Is To Stop The Rockets From Gaza

The rockets from Gaza just keep on coming--despite the Hamas declaration of a 'ceasefire':

Qassams fired from Gaza land in open areas within Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council; no injuries reported. In response, Israeli aircraft bomb smuggling tunnels under Gaza-Egypt border.
Post Options
...Despite Hamas' declaration of a ceasefire following Operation Cast Lead, Palestinian gunmen have continued firing several rockets and mortar shells almost every day, making life very difficult for southern Israel's residents.

Now we know that the UN had no problem withholding supplies to Gaza until Hamas returned stolen supplies--and in fact Hamas did return those stolen supplies.

Since we know this kind of pressure works, why not withhold all of the money and supplies that have been collected for Gaza until the rockets completely stop--and threaten that at any point should rockets be fired, all supplies will be withheld for a week?

The answer why this will not be done is because of the UN mentality, which distinguishes between food and arms. When the UN--for reasons unknown--put tons of unexploded Israeli arms under the greedy watchful eye of Hamas and it was stolen. The UN reaction was far more muted and as Elder of Ziyon has noted, the arms are in the hands of terrorists and are being dismantled to use for bombs against Israel.

Apparently, far be it that the UN should take an active interest in the explosives that were under its control--and far be it that the West take active steps to use pressure to prevent bloodshed.

Sanctions are for Saddam's Iraq, not for Hamas.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza and Hamas and UN.

Israelis Getting Younger While Palestinian Arabs Getting Older

One of the key arguments used in defense for land-for-peace in general and the formation of a second Palestinian state in particular has been the fear that the time and demographics were on the side of the Palestinian Arabs. According to the argument, the Palestinian Arab birth rate was higher than the Jewish birth rate and inevitably--if the Palestinian Arabs were not given a land of their own--Israel would some day become an Arab state. There have been clear indications that those arguments are based on false data--and now the numbers from the Central Bureau of Statistics is backing this up as well:

The bubble of demographic fatalism is bursting, according to the most recent data, published by the Central Bureau of Statistics. The data should be leveraged by the new government to formulate a demographic policy aimed at increasing the current 67 percent Jewish majority west of the Jordan River (without Gaza). The road map [that's road map, not Road Map, DA] would uproot demographic fatalism and advance demographic optimism, thus energizing aliya, the economy, overseas investments, diplomacy, national security, posture of deterrence and minimizing Jewish-Arab tension, which is fed by demographic fear.

ccording to the CBS, the country's Jewish population is getting younger and the Arab population getting older. The number of annual Jewish births increased by 45% between 1995 (80,400) and 2008 (117,000), as a result of aliya from the USSR, the shift by the Soviet olim from a typical Russian rate of one birth per woman to a typical Israeli rate of two-three births, the rising secular Jewish rate and the sustained high Orthodox and haredi rate.

The opposite trend among the Arab population is due to a number of factors:

large scale emigration, entrenched family planning, reduction of teen pregnancy, rapid urbanization, expanded education especially among women, record divorce rate and higher median marriage age.

The road map referred to above would would have a number of facets to it, as enumerated by the article's author, Yoram Ettinger--who has written about this topic extensively:

THE JEWISH DEMOGRAPHIC tailwind behooves the new government to introduce a demographic road map, which would increase the Jewish majority, while respecting the rights of the Arab minority:

1. Placing aliya at the top of the order of national priorities, as expected from the Jewish state and as required by economic and security challenges. The global economic meltdown, and the rise in anti-Semitism should be leveraged to increase aliya from the former USSR, US, Europe, Latin America and South Africa.

2. The conversion of some 250,000 olim from the former USSR - in accordance with Jewish laws - should be expedited.

3. Jewish immigration to - instead of emigration from - Jerusalem would be facilitated by the availability of jobs and lower-cost housing, created through entrepreneurs attracted by a drastic enhancement of the city's infrastructure (airport, fast railroad, Loop, additional freeway, industrial and residential zones).

4. Enticing the return of expatriates and reducing the number of quality emigrants by improving education and research and development infrastructures.

5. Expanding high school and academic programs for prospective olim.

6. Significant development of infrastructure in the Galilee and in the Negev, triggering emigration from the Greater Tel Aviv area, which would yield economic, environmental and demographic benefits.

7. Synchronizing industrial and educational 9-5 schedule, which would facilitate raising children and obtaining employment.

8. The establishment of a global Jewish foundation, which would support Jewish fertility worldwide, in view of high assimilation, low fertility rates among non-Israeli Jews and Holocaust-driven demographic challenges.

Keep in mind that the information on Arab demographics is important for the US--and Europe--as well, to the extent that the aid that is given to the Palestinian Arabs relies to an extent to the number of Palestinian Arabs that are supposedly receiving that aid.

It was reported back in 2006:

Congress today will be presented with a new study that documents the Palestinians have inflated their population numbers by over 50 percent and that almost $3 billion in United States taxpayer funds may have been provided as aid to the Palestinians in part based on fraudulent data.

Now that the US is giving $900 million to Gaza, it might be a good idea for the US to verify and be extra sure for what it will be used and to whom it will be given.
Technorati Tag: Israel and Palestinians.

Shai Agassi Tests His Electric Car Idea With 19 Companies

I've posted about Shai Agassi and his electric cars before--here and here--and now Agassi is taking the first step toward testing the concept widely:

In a move that thrilled Israeli opponents to foreign energy dependence as well as environmentalists across the country, 19 Israeli companies have signed cooperation agreements to test the suitability of electric cars for their company fleets in the first stage of the electric car program of Israeli venture-company Better Place.

Aiming to reduce global oil dependency and provide consumers with cleaner, sustainable personal transportation, Better Place employs swappable batteries, battery charging spots and battery exchange stations, and is aiming to operate its first electric car charging network in Israel and Denmark by 2011.


Israeli companies taking part in the test project represent Israeli high tech, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, finance, food, manufacturing and telecommunications industries. Participants include Israel Corporation, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Pelephone Communications, Partner Communications, Matrix IT, Direct Insurance- Financial Investments, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Netafim, Keter Plastics, Orbotech, Jafora Tabori, Manpower Israel, SQlink, Nike Israel, and Glasshouse Technologies.

The first stage of development will include designing and installing recharging points for company parking lots and employee homes.

Better Place CEO Shai Agassi called the program "the tip of the iceberg of global demand," saying he believes there is a potential global market of 50 million cars.

Apparently, OPEC had no direct comment--but they are probably watching:

"These [OPEC] projects are on hold ... and will continue to be until the (oil) price recovers," OPEC Secretary General Salem El-Badri told journalists. And as a result of the project delays, OPEC will not be able to increase production capacity by all of the five million barrels a day by 2012 that was previously expected, said El-Badri.

El-Badri's comments came after United Arab Emirates Oil Minister Mohammad Al-Hamli warned that weak oil prices and economic recession are threatening longer-term spending on Middle East oil projects.

In the rush to undermine this oil rich region, and in the race to somehow break the addiction to "Arab oil," one shouldn't undermine the future of this energy-driven civilization.

Such concerns are apparently not reciprocal, judging from the Oil Embargo of 1973.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Technorati Tag: Israel and Shai Agassi and Electric Cars and Better Place.