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- Edmund Burke
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Did You Know?
Israel engineers are behind the development of the largest communications router in the world, launched by Cisco.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Israel’s Paralympians harbor high hopes for London gold
Sailor Dror Cohen aims to repeat his team’s ’08 gold medal performance
With Israel’s Olympic delegation now back in the country, the country’s medal hopes have turned to its Paralympic team, which flies to London on Wednesday, two weeks before the start of the games.
“We have a lot of spirit. We will do our best and try to return with the gold medal,” sailor Dror Cohen told Army Radio Wednesday. Cohen and his two sailing partners won gold at the games in 2008 in Beijing, and hope to repeat their achievement.
Hand-cyclist Nati Gruberg, who cited cyclist Lance Armstrong as his inspiration, said that making the competition was an achievement. After being injured in a motorcycle accident and spending two years in the hospital, Gruberg was ranked seventh in the world in hand-cycling.
The cyclist said he “was very proud to represent Israel,” especially since there were “no regular people” who cycled for the country at the Summer Games. “I will try to get the honors for everybody.”
On Tuesday team members met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who wished them luck in the upcoming competition. Netanyahu told the athletes the two months with a cast on his leg helped him understand the difficulties of a physical handicap “just a little bit more.”
He couldn’t imagine the willpower and prowess they constantly had to call upon, he said, after he was forced to think twice about showering with his broken leg.
The Israeli delegation consists of 25 people, seven of them women, who are set to compete in nine sporting disciplines: sailing, wheelchair-tennis, sharpshooting, marathon, hand-cycling, table-tennis, swimming, riding and rowing.
Sharpshooter Doron Shaziri is one of the team’s more decorated members with six Paralympic medals.This summer he hopes to win his first Olympic gold. “It’s coincidence that I haven’t won gold at the Olympics yet,” he told the Israeli sporting site One. The same competitors attend every international competition, he said, noting that he won gold at the European and World championships.
The Ramat Gan resident was injured by a landmine at the age of 20 and had his leg amputated below the knee. Since then, Shaziri has won the European and World Championships, as well as multiple international medals.
At the ’96 Games in Atlanta he won two silver medals and in the following two Olympics he added three bronze and another silver to his shelf. “It’s a question of timing,” Shaziri said, of winning the ultimate prize. “You have to bring yourself to the peak at the right moment, and that’s what I’ve been training for.”
“You do amazing things and you act as role models,” Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat told the delegation. Livnat said her office was trying to increase its support of the Paralympic team, as Israel tries to bridge the gap between the able-bodied and disabled in all fields of life.
Because there are different levels of disabilities present at the game, the competition is divided into subcategories, determined by the severity of impairment the athlete has.
The 2012 London Paralympics will be the 14th time the Games are held. They will open on August 29 and close on September 9. Seats for the sporting events were already sold out, the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.
Paralympic handcyclist Nati Gruberg ranks first in Israel and seventh in the world in his sport. He was not born with a disability, but got seriously injured in a motorcycle accident in 1999.
Now he gets around on crutches or a wheelchair when he's not zooming around the track on his handcycle. "A handicapped athlete doing sports is already a winner," he says.
Film, editing by Michael Grynszpan; Reporting by Viva Sarah Press
Israeli artists have developed new bus stop libraries available free of charge to commuters and travelers across the country.
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Did You Know?
Relative to its population, Israel is the largest immigrant-absorbing nation on earth. Immigrants come in search of democracy, religious freedom, and economic opportunity.
Children injured in the school siege in Beslan, Russia in 2004 were able to convalesce at an Israeli coastal resort in Ashkelon – at the invitation of that city’s mayor.
LUSH Cosmetics has quietly closed its Beverly Hills, California location several months after a group known as “Join the Boycott LA” (www.JTBLA.com) organized a protest outside the store to expose the company’s support of PLO extremism. LUSH, with headquarters in the UK and stores in over 40 countries around the world, is using its customers’ money to support the PLO’s extremist “One World Campaign”. This virulently anti-Israel organization portrays Israel as an “illegal” occupier committing crimes against “Palestine” and grossly exaggerates the suffering in Gaza, placing responsibility solely on the Israelis.
There is much more work to be done. We urge you to ACT NOW FOR ISRAEL by sending an email to customercare@lush.co.uk to protest their anti-Israel extremism.
It has come to our attention that LUSH, a leading luxury handmade cosmetics company, gives a percentage of its profits to an anti-Israel organization called “OneWorld”. Upon visiting the OneWorld website (http://freedomoneworld.org/), it is very clear that they are supported by extreme anti-Israel groups that are sympathetic to terrorist activity against the State of Israel. For example, one of the supporting groups is called “Friends of al-Aqsa”. Visiting their website speaks for itself: http://www.foa.org.uk/.
Did You Know?
Israeli scientists developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation, diagnostic instrumentation for breast cancer.
Did You Know?
An Israeli-initiated project is drastically lowering the mortality rate of Ethiopian children infected with the AIDS/HIV virus.