I wasn’t looking to become the “poster boy” for Jewish-Arab coexistence when I set out north with my wife last Friday. After 19 years of marriage, we couldn’t resist an invitation from friends celebrating a family event in a Galilee hotel over Shabbat. Our 18 year old daughter, on leave from her National Service job in the Herzl Museum in Jerusalem, was primed to watch our three year old, together with their siblings (15, 14, and 11). Needless to say, we were extremely worried about how “the baby” would take the absence of both parents for the first time in her life (at least one of us had always been with her when the other was traveling or away), but as it turned out, that was to be the least of our worries – the kids, including the youngest, all had a blast.

Other troubles were waiting for us down the road. To get to northern Israel from our part of the country (western Shomron/Sharon), the most efficient route is to take Route 6 north to its current terminus, and then Road 65 east and north. That road, the easternmost within “Green Line” Israel, passes through an area called Wadi Ara, part of a geographic construct called “the triangle.” Its residents are almost exclusively Muslim Arabs, and the centerpiece of the area is a town called Um el-Faham. The most recent news stories about this area came out a couple of months ago, when several Israeli activists got permission to hold an “Israeli flag parade” in the town; the High Court authorized the parade, after police had turned down requests to hold it over and over. It turned out police were right, to some extent; there was minor rioting, and police worked hard to keep the small group of Jews and the much larger group of local residents protesting the parade at bay.

In general, though, Jews – especially people “like us,” observant residents of what some would call a “settlement,” would stay far away from Um el-Faham, and probably never even get within 10 kilometers of the place – if not for Road 65. As it turned out, however, that is where my car decided to break down. What happened and who’s to blame (I have a whole theory about that) are less important than the fact that the car essentially became undriveable an hour and a half before Shabbat – when we still had an hour or so to go to get to our destination!

Kids in yeshivas and day schools – and even secular kids here in Israel – all know the tales of how people sacrifice for the Sabbath, dropping valuable merchandise, money, wallets, etc. in order not to violate the holy day. But in those stories, the traveler always seems to be in a forest or other relatively quiet or calm area, and since in the old days travelers could be on the road for days at a time, they usually carried at least some provisions with them. We, on the other hand, were in the heart of one of the biggest Arab areas in Israel. The date, it’s useful to note, was May 15 – the date Israeli Arabs commemorate as “Nakba Day.”

But all that was a million miles away from our minds. We were preparing for a fun weekend, our first chance to see how the “other half” (the half whose kids stay home when the parents go away!) live. A/C running, music on the radio, it was like a dream. And then the nightmare began. It started with a “funny noise” (I should know better by now what the noises lead to!). But the car seemed OK, so I ignored it. All of the sudden, a little past a place called (I kid you not) “Al Aryan,” the car started kicking and bucking. Impossible to steer, with the temperature gauge shooting up in seconds, I figured we had to get off the road right away. But where? Fortunately, Road 65 is a major commercial strip, so there are businesses and strip malls every few kilometers. Now I needed a gas station – some place to park the car and check out the problem.

And that’s when I met Musa – the Um el-Faham mechanic who saved the day. Which story I will relate in part two (when I get around to writing it!).

Tags: Al Aryan, car trouble, israel, Israeli Arabs, Jerusalem, Knesset, Middle East, Shabbat, wadi ara

Not to sound racist, but there’s no way a person raised in a Western country can’t feel some consternation when a person of clearly Arabic background gets on a plane. 9/11 was just too much of a shock to the system, and it’s impossible not to do some personal profiling, even if you try not to.

The same applies to Arabic text. If you’re from the United States or Israel (and probably lots of other countries) it’s impossible not to look at a page of Arabic writing and not get “nervous” – as in, “it must be some anti-Israel/anti-Jewish/pro-terrorist screed.” We’ve come to expect it, especially in Israel. And if you live in an area where there is lots of Arabic on the radio (such as Israel), you get the same suspicions listening to broadcasts of speakers who are dramatically intoning – something.

Other than learning to understand Arabic, there’s little you can do about the audio “threat” (one of my daughters more or less taught herself Arabic, so she can make out what goes on in these broadcasts). But for the rest of us who are too lazy/uninterested/incapable of learning a new language at this point in our lives, there’s Google Translations. There are lots of reasons not to like Google (like the people here say), but one amazing thing Google has done, imho, is Google Translate, where you can paste in text or URLs and get them automatically translated between dozens of languages – like English, Arabic, and Hebrew, as well as Swedish, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, and of course the more “pedestrian” languages like Italian and French (no offense meant!).

Google Translate has helped me out numerous times – including just this afternoon, as I was writing a feature story on Israeli boxing. As part of the story, I wanted to mention the tragic death of a former Israeli Golden Gloves champ, Karim Nayif Bathish, who was killed a couple of weeks ago in an auto accident. I really wanted a picture of Bathish, but couldn’t find one anywhere – on the English and Hebrew sites, that is. Then I got the bright idea to Google Bathtish’s name in Arabic, seeking out articles about him on Israeli websites in Arabic. As a local hero in Nazareth and Haifa, you’d figure there would be a couple of articles. And indeed there were – complete with picture. The articles were quite factual, and the talkbacks were all what you would expect (mourning for the victim, etc.).

This isn’t the first time I’ve used Google Translate to research an article on Arabic language websites – I actually wrote an article in the JPost about it last year. And of course, I can’t help but check out other stories than the ones I was searching for on these sites. Let’s just say that while some fill the post-9/11 stereotype, most don’t. Believe it or not, “they” are not as obsessed with us as we think they are!

The thrust of my boxing article is how the organization tries to promote co-existence (most of the boxers are Arab or Russian kids). The director of the organization, Dr. Shahade, told me than in 20 years of running the Israel Boxing Association, there hasn’t been one ethnic/religious fight among the boxers! That’s great for kids who are in shape enough to box – but how can the rest of us avoid tension? Maybe Google Translate is the arena for us!

Tags: Arabic language, computers, English language, Google, Hebrew language, israel, Japanese language, Jerusalem Post, technology, war

In Israel, the authorities are very focused on collecting taxes (I guess authorities everywhere are). As such, the authorities have set up a variety of mechanisms to make sure that they get their money. Thanks to a computer snafu, though, they managed to get some money that wasn’t theirs – including mine!

Most people in Israel (salaried workers) have their income taxes automatically deducted; technically, they don’t have to file a tax return, unless they have an exceptional expense or deduction (average charitable contributions, credits for dependents, etc. are all factored in already). Independent operators/freelancers/self-employed people, on the other hand, file annual returns. Every two months, you are supposed to pay an advance to the Tax Authority; they give you a little book of receipts where you are supposed to fill in the amount of money you earned, and pay a percentage as income tax. That percentage is determined at the beginning of the calendar year, and is based on your previous year’s income.

It makes as much sense as any collection system, but it’s expected that there is going to be some money owed by either side, since by definition a freelancer/self-employed person does not earn the same amount each year from the same employer (otherwise they might as well take a salary). Between varying income, changing business expenses, new dependents (ie children), and other factors, you could be eligible for a hefty refund – or have to pay a hefty amount to cover your obligation.

Having done this for a few years now, I can also say with authority that it depends on the accountant you have, too. I have a good one. Not that he’s a crook or anything, he just knows his way around the tax codes, and has been able to get me a significant refund each year for the past three years!

According to his reckoning, I was supposed to get about 5,000 shekels back this year. They usually send these refunds out by February, but here it is May, and I haven’t gotten mine yet. What I have gotten, though, are dunning letters demanding that I pay them 2,400 shekels!

Now, let it not be said that I don’t do my part as a taxpayer; there are lots of deductions I don’t take on purpose. I’d rather pay them and have them leave me alone. When I got the first letter (they don’t start threatening until the third), I called up my accountant and asked him what had gone wrong – assuming he had miscalculated or something. “Let me check my figures,” he told me – and called back a couple of days later to tell me that he had been right, and the tax people owed me money! “I even called the tax official in charge of your account,” he told me, “and he agreed completely.” So what happened? “Must have been a glitch. I’m sure they’ll clear it up in a couple of days.”

Nope – and I’ve now gotten a fourth letter! I was all set to write them a check, when I saw the article describing exactly what happened. In his annual report, Micha Lindenstrauss said that the Tax Authority had “lost” the deduction eligibility information for a whole slew of taxpayers when implementing a new IT system. Apparently, there a series of different computer systems that the Authority is trying to unite in a single system – a project that has been going on for the last 18 years (!) – and it still isn’t ready.  Now the question is, do I give up, or try to get my money back? Can’t we put some hi-tech entrepreneurs to work on this?

Tags: Accounting, computers, Income tax, israel, Micha Lindenstrauss, snafu, Tax

That underground tunnel in the TV show Weeds – the one where they moved drugs and illegal aliens into California from Mexico – was no TV show writer invention. There are probably dozens of such tunnels, similar to the ones dug by Hamas from Sinai into Gaza – except that in Israel, the terrorists move not only drugs, but weapons, like missiles and bombs, through the tunnels. Those are the missiles we hear about almost every day as they are fired at Israeli communities in the Negev.

The tunnels aren’t easy to find, and the tunnel diggers are very good at camouflaging their work. The problem is even worse in the U.S than in Israel (this one was air-conditioned – I guess Mexican smugglers have a higher standard of living that the ones in the Middle East!), because the border with Mexico is much longer than the border between Sinai and Gaza. Unless a cop or border patrolman gets lucky, it’s next to impossible to find the tunnels.

Now, a team of Israeli researchers may have discovered a way to solve the problem. Dr. Assaf Klar and Dr. Raphael Linker, of the Technion’s Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering have come up with a way to use sound waves to detect the existence of tunnels. “Tunnel excavation is accompanied by the release of stresses that cause permanent – though very tiny – displacements and strains in the ground,” says Dr. Klar. “If you can measure these strains in the soil with sensitive equipment, you can find the tunnel’s location.” In other words, you can find an underground tunnel if you know what to listen for!

Called BOTDR (Brillouin optical time domain reflectometry), the technology uses optical fiber that can read the underground topology of an area, “keeping an ear out” for patterns that indicate distortions in the underground soil or rocks. The Technion team applied the BOTDR technology to their system, which is programmed with profiles for all sorts of possible disturbances, such as rainwater dripping into the ground, flowing water, movements of snakes and other underground dwellers, etc. All those disturbances are filtered out – and the system raises an alarm when it comes across a pattern that indicates that a tunnel is being dug – or being used. The pair presented their findings last month at the Defense, Security and Sensing Conference of SPIE, to a rapt audience (so my sources say)!

Tags: Gaza, Hamas, hi-tech, israel, terrorists, tunnels, underground, war

Before anyone gets too panicky about swine flu, make sure you check with the experts. Not the CDC or your doctor; as everyone knows, Google is the real expert on everything, including flu. And according to the Google Flu Trends site, the risk of flu is low – nearly minimal. “Current estimates of flu activity are still generally low across the United States, as is expected given the confirmed swine flu case count,” say Google.

And how did Google get to be such an expert on flu – and other – trends? By working with great developers right here in Israel! Google has two development centers in Israel – in Tel Aviv and Haifa – which shows how much Google values Israeli development (there are only a couple of countries around the world – MUCH bigger than Israel! – that have more than one development center).

Flu Trends is a demonstration of the overall Google Trends technology. According to the Trends blog,

Our team found that certain aggregated search queries tend to be very common during flu season each year. We compared these aggregated queries against data provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and we found that there’s a very close relationship between the frequency of these search queries and the number of people who are experiencing flu-like symptoms each week. As a result, if we tally each day’s flu-related search queries, we can estimate how many people have a flu-like illness.

But it turns out that Google has been not only using made in Israel tech – its whole identity could be considered to have been created here, according to this article in Haaretz. Artist Ruth Kedar designed the famous Google logo ten years ago while she was at Stanford in California. According to Kedar, the logo’s simple look is deceptive, hiding its complex layers. Quoting her, the article says:

Someone who sees the logo for the first time doesn’t necessarily need to absorb all the layers and considerations behind every decision – it’s better for him to discover something new every time. It somewhat amuses me to turn on the computer and look at the logo I designed. But it also fills me with pride. When you say Google to people today, they immediately see the colorful logo.”

Tags: Google, health, hi-tech, israel, maps

just listening to some Elvis – got inspired to repost this (originally posted on israel21c.net)

If Elvis had lived, he could have been president – after all, if it was good enough for Ronald Reagan, imagine how the voters would have gone for Elvis Presley! But I have a better idea; He was such a unifying force and a symbol of coexistence, Elvis would have been the perfect candidate for Prime Minister of Israel! And he could have qualified for the job, too – after all, Elvis was (sort of) Jewish!

On the occasion of what would have been his 74th birthday on January 8, it’s worth remembering Elvis and his impact on bringing people together. While casual music listeners tend to put down Elvis’ relatively unsophisticated music, all his biographers attribute his early use of rhythm and blues (which some accused him of “stealing from blacks”) as opening the door for the Motown sound, and later on the rise of Michael Jackson and other modern African-American superstars. So right there, Elvis was a unifying force, right on his home turf.

But less known is his charitable work for Jewish organizations in his hometown of Memphis, and his attitude to racism – and to Arabs and Jews. There are millions of Elvis fans out there, which means there are thousands of stories floating around about him, most of which can’t be corroborated. But the overwhelming consensus of the man is that he was someone who was charitable – both financially and personally – and identified with minorities, including Jews and Arabs.

During his latter years, for example, Elvis would take to wearing a big “Chai” – and when he was asked why by his friend guitarist Charlie Hodge, he supposedly answered that he didn’t want to “miss out on going’ to heaven on a technicality!”. In fact, quoting from the book “Elvis and Gladys,”, this site makes a case for Elvis’ Jewish ancestry (his maternal grandmother), which explained to some extent his affinity for Jews. According to the book:

“One day the Memphis Jewish Welfare sent a delegation to Graceland to see him and ask if he could contribute. At Christmas every year he would donate $1,000 to a number of Memphis charities and one of them was the Memphis Hebrew Academy, and so they thought maybe they could get something. They explained what they do, taking care of poor Jews and orphans. Elvis excused himself for a minute. When he came back, he handed the leader of the delegation a check. They didn’t know what to expect. They thought $1,000 would be nice. When they looked at the check, it was for $150,000. The equivalent of more than a million dollars today. The man said, ‘Elvis, you must have made a mistake.’ Elvis said, ‘I didn’t make a mistake, I know what I’m doing.’”

And Elvis had a soft spot for Arabs as well. Michael Saba, former executive director of the National Association of Arab Americans, tells a tale of a childhood friend of his in Memphis:

“Farid told me that one day at his high school, some of the school bullies started teasing him, calling him names like “you dirty Arab” and threatened to hit him. He said Elvis came along and said, “Hey, you leave him alone. I know him and his family and they are very nice people. Those ‘Arabs’ treat me well and you better treat him well also.” The bullies moved off and Elvis told Farid that if anybody ever tried that again, he should let Elvis know.”

So besides a talent for music, Elvis had a talent for peacemaking! Of course, Elvis isn’t around for us to give him a try at leadership (or is he?) but we do have Israel’s Elvis Inn, “famous for bringing Arabs and Jews together,” especially on Elvis Impersonator Nights! And as one of the impersonators told reporters,

“If Elvis Presley was alive, he could help the crisis of the Arab and the Jew. I think he’d make a song of it, of the whole situation, and perform in a lot of Arab countries and of course in Israel. He’d try to make peace between the Israelis and the Arabs once and for all. I think he would have done it if he was alive today.”

Tags: Arabs, elvis, fun, israel, Jews, music

I wrote an article in the Jerusalem Post a couple of weeks ago on using Twitter to find a job (link is to archive on my own site, original JP edition here). I thought it was a pretty good article, and so did Mikael, who is visiting from Sweden (he blogged about it in Swedish!). He sent me a direct message on Twitter, and asked if he could meet me to discuss how social media was being used in Israel (I’m not an expert, but I play one in the newspaper )

Only one problem – I got his message a week before Pesach, which of course is crazy time around here, like everywhere else. Since he was based in Jerusalem he naturally wanted to meet me there, but I had already done my Jerusalem thing that week and wasn’t planning to go back.

So I invited him out here – to “the ranch.” Because I live in an area that is uh, disputed, I thought it would be interesting for Mikael to get a look at a side of Israel that I figured he hadn’t ever seen. And, he accepted. So last Friday afternoon, Mikael and his wife drove out here for a Shabbat dinner (sans challah, of course – and I don’t think they finished their piece of matza!). We saw the sites – particularly, the top of the hill, where you can see the whole country, practically (that’s not them in the photo, btw). Our Swedish guests even came to shul Friday night – a very gutsy move, if you ask me!

Of course, our guests said they had a great time (I hope they really did!) But we Shamahs had a blast! My kids were very excited over the whole idea of visitors coming from so far away, people whom they would otherwise never have probably met (the couple is from northern Sweden, a destination that is definitely not on the way during our usual annual hegiras to family in New York and Los Angeles!). We discussed lots of subjects, including politics (can Israelis hold a discussion on anything without including politics?), the kids’ school, Judaism, and why synagogues have a mechitza (I sensed that Mikael’s wife wasn’t too happy about being on “the other side,” but they were too polite to make an issue out of it!). One of my kids even tried to talk to them using Swedish “TV accents” (you know what I mean!), but they were very cool about it. Kids!

And despite my plea in a phone conversation before their visit (I said “your presence is present enough for us” – good line, huh?), our guests insisted on bringing gifts – an album of photos by Swedish photographer Sune Jonnson, and this very pretty trivet!

So, even though we didn’t get to discuss the details of how people in Israel use social media, I think the entire evening was an object lesson in exactly that. If not for Twitter – Mikael’s interest in it, my writing about it, and his DMing me using it – we would never have had the opportunity to meet them, much less have them visit our  home. And anyone else from exotic (or even less exotic) locations who wants a taste of “down home hospitality” are invited to drop me a line (leave a comment or write me at ds @ newzgeek.com!)

Tags: guests, international, israel, passover, sweden, twitter

I can promote myself on my own blog, can’t I?

Hope so! This is a companion blog to my newest site, http://www.israeltech.net. I’ve been writing about all these startups for years now, and I never had a site where I could archive them – or even “monetize” them, since I retain the rights to the articles I write for the Startup Sunday column in the Jerusalem Post. I won’t be posting just hi-tech info (”other stuff”, like the title says, will be here as well).

About time I started a blog, no?

Tags: hi-tech, israel, Jerusalem Post, technology