news items from the Jewish World and Israel
CES – the biggest Consumer Electronics Show, which takes place once a year in Las Vegas, is making Aliyah and is proudly starting a mini-trade show in Israel. And as CEO Gary Shapiro told us, following the overwhelming response for the inaugural show, he will asses making next years show a lot bigger and open to the public.
The Israeli water technology industry has been around almost as long as the state of Israel, however in recent years since Israel’s entrance to the OECD the countries dominance worldwide has expanded dramatically. We are at the WATEC Convention in Tel-Aviv, which has become the biggest showcase of Israeli innovations to representative of over fifty-countries. So with close to billion dollars a year in revenues the Israeli water industry is becoming one of the biggest exporters of the country.
Ron Jacobsohn, JN1 Correspondent: The Israeli water technology industry has been around almost as long as the state of Israel, however in recent years since Israel’s entrance to the OECD the countries dominance worldwide has expanded dramatically. We are at the Watec convention in Tel-Aviv which has become the biggest showcase of Israeli innovations to representative of over 50-countries.
Anthony Cox, Head of OECD’s Climate, Biodiversity & Water Division admits that since Israel has joined his organization it started sharing its water technology, which has had a very crucial impact on many of the member states.
Anthony Cox, Head of OECD Climate, Biodiversity & Water Division: Israel is clearly a world leader in water technology, and since Israel joined the OECD they made a strong contribution to thinking more about the integration of policy with technology in the water sector. We’ve got a lot of work going on around how to insure the financial sustainability, the good governance of water, this is all critically linked to the role of technology and Israel played a strong role in trying to make those linkages clear.
Adi Yefet Beeri from the governmental office NEWTech claims that the Israeli water industry earns around two-billion dollar a year.
Adi Yefet Beeri, Director, Israel NEWTech: The Israeli water industry is quite a mature industry and very advanced, we can find some more mature companies and big companies like Mekorot which is a national company, Amiad, Bermad, and we can find very, very small companies, start-up companies like you can see here in the innovation pavilion. So, we’re talking about around 300-400 Israeli water companies and the sub-categories that those companies are dealing with are like.. It’s a very various area, I mean when we’re talking about water, we usually think about the tap that we open in our house and we some water. But, you can find here companies that are dealing with wastewater treatment, with water purification, even with security; we have to be secure with our water resources.
Mapal Green Energy is an Israeli company that was chosen by the Palestinian Authority to help them solve their sewage problems in the streets of their cities and villages.
Zeev Fisher, CEO, Mapal Green Energy: As we now, in the West bank there are many , many villages all over and they don’t have any solutions to the waste water treatment. Our technology, since it’s very simple, cost-effective both in terms of capital investment and operational cost, was chosen to be a solution for those villages in the rural communities.It’s true that it’s an Israeli company, but it’s a common problem, we’re living in the same place, and the sewage – it’ll actually contaminate not only the West Bank but also our territories as well and we’re living in the same one planet, so it’s a solution that will help all of us in this region; Jordan , Palestinian and Israelis.
Ron Jacobsohn, JN1 Correspondent: With close to billion dollars a year in revenues the Israeli water industry is becoming one of the big exporters of the country. For JN1 I am Ron Jacobsohn at Watech 2013 in Tel-Aviv.
The direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians is about to enter its fourth month out of the nine, which secretary of state, John Kerry, has given both sides. It is no a secret that the sides accepted the terms of these talks hesitantly and without much enthusiasm. We talked to some of our experts to see what is really happening behind the closed doors.
Since Stanley Fisher left his post as the Governor of the Bank of Israel in July, finding a suitable successor has become a real fiasco. Two appointed governors had to resign because of stories that were published about them in the media. Although she has been acting governor since Fisher left, Dr. Karnit Flug, was snubbed twice for the post before Netanyahu finally realized she was actually the best candidate for the job.
We are at the residence of the British Ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, who is having a state-like reception to Britain’s second biggest export, after the Queen, Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine and guess who is getting some image advice from the two international image guru’s…