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The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, May 17,1984 - Page 9
IsraeVs technology on^ next week
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By
SARAH HARRIS
TEL AVIV TJCNSJ —
It seems hard to believe that with the amount of effort and planning which has gone into Isratech 84 that the Tel Aviv-based high-technology conference lasts a mere four or so days.
Nevertheless, from May 20 to May 24, the Israelis, with the hospitality for which they have become justly famous, will play host to hundreds of buyers and overseas guests who will come to this blockbuster event (designed to show off Israel's technological achievements to the world,
Isratech, a regular showcase of advances in modem technology, is held once every three years, Isratech 84 will be the sixth such event and this year the market is open for any visitor to take advantage of the huge advances made even since last year's Isratech.
It will be held at the International Trade Fair Centre in Tel Aviv.
On display will bie companies representing electronics industries, including defence and security, medical and industrial, telecommunications and control systems, and computer equipment and software; metals >— aerospace, including avionics, aircraft and transport equipment; and industrial machinery.
Israel is coneemed with high technology and committed to research and development to an extent that few other .Western countries are. Since the eariy 70s there has been a rapid growth in technology-based industries in Israel, spurred on by two m^for directive institutions: universities and the army.
The push ffom the universities came in the form of academic research that found a vocational result. Apart from the already prestigious Weizmann Institute at Rehovot, other universities in Israel began to generate industrial plants which produced the fruit of the research.
Computers were the first industry to receive a major boost from this solidly practical setup. Today companies such as Elbit and Elscint have become household names through the application of academic
The innovative robot gripper^ developed at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, enables industrial robote to handle delicate objects that human hands would crush. [Rell^on News Service photo] ■ .:- : ' ;
research which, like Topsy, just growed.
Israel is a country which has long made a virtue but of necessity. The need for a hyper-mddeirn military industry which could supply the Israeli Defence Forces with the best possible equipihent has in turn produced not only a thriving list of air, ground, and sea defence systems, but has also had a domestic overspiir in the application of defence techniques to consumer security needs.
More poignantly, Israel *s constant wars have helped the country's medical tech-; nology to become a world beater in almost every direction possible. A few of the better known developments will illustrate the point.
Laser Industries Limited is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of a wide range of carbon dioxide surgical laser systems. The Sharplari lasers assure for the surgeon highly precise and sterile surgery; while a more compact unit is designed for
dermatological use in outpatient clinics or doctors' surgeries.
Or take just one aspect oit Teva Pharmaceuticals^ latestdevelopments: a whole range of quality surgical sutures, sterilized by modem, sophisticated gamma ray techniques to make the sutures easier to handlej and double-packed to ensure sterility until the moment of use.
Teva, Israel's largest pharmaceutical grbup, has researched the different kinds of sutures inl depth and offers product information on the sorts of operations in which they should be used.
Navot Technology of Ramat Gan will show Isratech visitors one of its most revolutionary devices so far: a radically new kind of hearing; aid for the totally deaf person. Through its subsidiaiy. Sensor Aid Industries, Navot has launched the Kanievsky tactical aid, named after the scientist who
developed the project. Dr. Kanievsky himself is totally deaf and is using the device on a daily basis.
The Kanievsky aid converts sound waves to a series of vibratory signals of varying frequency and amplitude, which are sensed by deaf people who then learn to interpret them. The aid is about the size of a packet of cigai\ettes and Aveighs 1 lb, It is strapped to the user's body and has proved extremely useful for people who have no hearing ability at all, either because of disease, accident, or from birth. '
The feedback of the vibrations, say Navot, also helps deaf people to learn to speak clearly — a primary example of applied research and development on show at Isratech.
The Israel Institute of Technology has been learning how to pick locks as part of its recent tests on another exciting product: the Lucan Secure-E-Key. Immune to conventional lock-picking attempts —it takes, about half an hour with this lock, whereas a conventional lock can be picked in about 25 seconds — it has also been found reassuringly resistant to attempts to bore into the lock from outside, saw it off at the key entry, or saw off the shackle. It will only open, says the Institute, when a pull of 2.7 tons is applied!
These are a just a few of the products which will be on show at Isratech. It's a trade fair which Israel's minister of industry and trade, Gideon Patt, believes will give visitors "an excellent opportunity to become familiar with all that Israel has to offer in high technology for industry, and at the same time to explore new business, trading, or manufacturing opportunities in the international marketplace."
Israel offers a free trade area agreement with the EEC, high technology and skilled labor, generous incentives for investors, and an active domestic market.
The Buyers Advisory Guide, which will run all through Isratech, offers technical information, visits to enterprises, industrial and research centres, and meetings with manufacturers. A large delegation is attending under auspices of the Province of Ontario.
CARL ALPERT
JERUSALEM-
The song, Hatikva, which is sung at.Zionist: and Jewish meetings the world over, is recognized as the official anthem of Zionism. Many believe it is also the anthem of the State of Israel. This is not so, and when Pinchas Goldstein, a Likud member of the Knesset, introduced a bill not long ago to give it formal recognition as the national anthem, he ran into objections.
The proposal stimulated a meeting of Arabs who claimed that the wording of Hatikva, which speaks of a Jewish soul and the 2,000-year longing to be a free people in Zion, fails to take note of the fact that Arabs also live in Israel. They objected to Hatikva and called for a national anthem which would be acceptable to both Arabs and Jews. Jewish leaders of left wing parties agreed with them and decided to fight the proposal with ridicule.
Newsview Magazine noted that this was the first bill ever presented to the Knesset with a musical' score in Its text. Shulamit Aloni commented, in opposition, that since the exact music score would bc^come part of the law, if adopted, anyone, singing it off-key would be technically liable for prosecution for violating that portion of the law which called for punishment of up to a year in Jail for /'disrespect" of the anthem.
Another Knesset member, also against the proposal, offered an amendment: that Hatikva be played only in F-Sharp Major, to make it more difficult.
The Labor Party members present were united in their opposition. They claimed a law was unnecessary, and would deprive Hatikya of its sponteneous, sentimental aura. Further, it would exacerbate Arab-Jeurjsh relations.
When the vote was taken only 37 of the 120 members of the Knesset were present. Likud members were conspicuous by their absence, and the bill was defeated, 25 to 12. The hope was expressed that some day two composers,
a Jew and an Arab working together, would present a truly national anthem which all could sing without reservation.
Did anyone consider that this was not merely an idle debate over a song, but a confrontation with a fundamental question: Is Israel a Jewish state? If so, there could be no objection to Hatikva. And if not, why are Jewish holidays given state status, and why is Hebrew the primary language and why are Jews urged to come here ?
It would appear that many of the opponents of the bill, in their eagerness to turn down anything suggested by a Likud member, have committed a major faux pas, and have in effect denied Jewish rights to be in Israel and to establish their state here.
Likud members who failed to be present to Support the bill are no less guilty than their Labor colleagues who voted against. Their excuse that they could not imagine that Labor would ever vote against Hatikva does not exempt them from criticism. - There is also another unanswered question. When Goldstefai realized tiiat his bill was doomed to fidlure why did he press ahead with it, placing the Knesset In the humiliating position of voting against its de facto national anthem, whatever &e reasons.
Though denied legal status, Hatikva is played in Israel on all state occasions. A quick look into its history is not out of place.
The words were written by a bohemian poet, Galician-born Naphtali Herz Imber, almost 100 years ago. It was not set to music which many believe is taken from Smetana's Moldau, but musicologists have traced it unmistakably to a Sephardi tune for Hallel, published in a volume of Sephardi melodies in 1857,-20 years before Smetana wrote his composition.
Hatikva became popular first among the towns and villages of Palestine at the end of the 19th centuryjmd then made its way to Europe where the Zionist masses sang it enthusiastically. It was adopted as the official anthem of the Zionist movement at the Zionist Congress in 1907.
Imber was a nim-confomiist character. Some have cidled him the first Hebrew
beatnik. He had a weakness for drink, aind it is told that he was once unceremoniously thrown out of a Zionist meeting in New York when he became a nuisance. No one knew who he was.
As he was ejected he heard the audience singing the Hatikva and he commented that they could toss him out, but his song remained.
For some time he lived at Dalya-al-Carmel, near Haifa, where he served as secretary to Laurence Oliphant, the Christian Zionist. ■
He died in New York in 1909, after what was said to have been too much liquid celebration on SimchatTorah. He was hardly the kind of personality to become a national hero, but his song sfruck a responsive chord. Since the establishment of Israel, the final
words have been changed. "To return to the land of our fathers, the city where David abode," the version generally sung in the Diaspora, became in Israel "to be a free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jeruisalem."
If it is anv consoloarioh. it mav be recalled that even the blue and white flag, with the 6-pointed star of David, was not adopted until Oct. 28,1949, more than 17 months after the state had come into existence. Approval was preceded by long and wearying debate.
that flag, unmistakably Jewish, is displayed everywhere in Israel, even in Arab villages, and I have not heard any objection from them on the grounds that it is a "Jewish" symbol. Or perhaps someone has given them an idea now.
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I BARBRA ENJOYS VISIT |
E Baibra Streisand during a recent visit to the Museum of the Diaspora In Tel Aviv. E
E Streisand met Prime Mhilster Shamir and other top Israelis while hi Israel. [IPPA photo] E
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