In the kitchen there's no nationality or religion

"Working in the kitchen with sharp instruments doesn't mean we have to kill each other," says one of a team of multiethnic chefs who brought culinary glory to Israel.

Four chefs on a multiethnic Israeli team called Taste of Peace garnered three gold medals and a diploma of honor at the international Villeroy & Boch 2010 Culinary World Cup competition in Luxembourg, that took place November 20 to 24.

"The idea is to show peace through the dishes we do," says Sarkis Yacoubian, an Armenian chef instructor from Jaffa who founded Taste of Peace with Arab Christian Johnny Goric, executive chef at the Intercontinental Resort in Jericho.

The team is rounded out by Charlie Fadida, the Jewish executive chef at the Sheraton in Tel Aviv, and his sous chef, Muslim Arab Imad Shourbaji. Four culinary students and an instructor from the restaurant at the Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center came along for the event, considered the Olympics of cooking.

"We showed the world that working in the kitchen with sharp instruments doesn't mean we have to kill each other," Yacoubian tells ISRAEL21c. "I'm proud and glad we succeeded in giving this message."

Gold medals, diplomas of honor

The men triumphed despite finding upon their arrival that the kitchen they'd reserved in advance did not exist. On the verge of turning around and going home, they found a hotel restaurant chef who gave them free reign of his kitchen in off hours as well as the hotel's basement laundry room for prep work. This was a far cry from the Sheraton kitchen where they'd been practicing for five months, but it was the best they could do.

"We used the restaurant's kitchen while everyone was sleeping, because we had to present our food at five in the morning," Goric recounts. "We had two hours to display the dishes before the expo opened to the public from 11 in the morning to 7 at night. Then we collected it from our tables after they announced the winners. We did the same thing for four days. It was really tough, but our achievement is something most people work toward for a long time."

Goric, Shourbaji and Fadida each earned a gold medal for their cold platters and tapas. "I did a salmon platter with five salmon terrines in different styles, and tapas for six - two cold and two hot," relates Goric, a 37-year-old resident of East Jerusalem.

Yacoubian, who at 51 is the oldest of the foursome, received a diploma of honor for his two-dimensional marzipan sculpture of wild horses, finished with a "painted coat" of white and dark chocolate.

Just the beginning

"I used to teach disabled people and I taught them that cooking is not just adding spices and making soup. It's also art, and you should be creative," Yacoubian explains.

In thanks to the restaurant that allowed them to use its facilities, Taste of Peace presented a multiethnic meal to the workers after the competition.

All of the team's expenses were covered by Goric's personal client, the Norwegian ambassador to the Palestinian Authority. During his career, Goric has prepared dishes for King Abdullah II of Jordan, former French President Jacques Chirac, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat.

"Hopefully this is just the beginning," says Goric. "We want to do more projects together if we get more sponsors." To be eligible for the Culinary World Cup, which takes place every four years, Taste of Peace joined both the World Association of Chefs Societies and the Israeli Chefs Union.

"I think these guys are the best ambassadors for peace," says Yacoubian of his teammates, who are all close friends. "We are trying to go forward with it and hope we can do more activities together to show that in the kitchen there is no nationality or religion; we're just human beings who can talk with each other through the dishes we make."

http://www.israel21c.org/201012168631/social-action/in-the-kitchen-theres-no-nationality-or-religion

Gilad Shalit - Israeli Hostage in Gaza

Do you remember what you did during the last

4 YEARS and 6 MONTHS?

GILAD DOES
- each and every moment of each and every Day

Gilad Shalit (Hebrew: גלעד שליט‎, born 28 August 1986) is an Israeli soldier who was captured on 25 June 2006 by Hamas in a cross-border raid. He was captured near the Kerem Shalom crossing (in Israel), and has been held as a prisoner in the Gaza Strip by Hamas since then.

Shalit, holding a rank of corporal in the IDF's Armor Corps at the time of his abduction, has since been promoted to staff sergeant.

He was the first Israeli soldier captured by Palestinian militants since Nachshon Wachsman in 1994. Shalit holds French citizenship, a fact that encouraged France and the European Union to be involved to some extent in efforts to release him.

Hamas has refused requests from the International Committee of the Red Cross to allow the ICRC to visit Shalit on the grounds that any such visit could betray the location where Shalit is being held. Several human rights organizations have stated that the terms and conditions of Shalit's detention are contrary to international humanitarian law. In exchange for his release, Hamas is demanding the release of all female and underage Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, as well as a further 1,000 prisoners, a number of which are convicted by Israeli courts on terrorism charges. There are currently around 8,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel. The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, which released a report in September 2009, called for Shalit to be released.

International law

Since 2006, the Red Cross (ICRC) has repeatedly asked Hamas to allow visits by the ICRC to ascertain Shalit's conditions of detention and treatment, but Hamas refused the requests. An ICRC representative said that under international humanitarian law Shalit is entitled to regular and unconditional contacts with his family.[83] On 25 June 2007, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem issued a statement saying "international humanitarian law absolutely prohibits taking and holding a person by force in order to compel the enemy to meet certain demands, while threatening to harm or kill the person if the demands are not met", and thus holding Shalit as a hostage to their demands is a war crime. B'Tselem also noted that denying access to ICRC visitations is also a violation of international law.[84] Israeli NGO Monitor said that Shalit's abductors breach several provisions of the Third Geneva Convention, e.g., the right to humane treatment (Art. 13); the right to have knowledge of a POW's location (Art. 23); and the right to unfettered access to the Red Cross (Art. 126). Human Rights Watch has also stated that Hamas authorities are obligated by the laws of war to allow Shalit to correspond with his family, and noted that three letters and a voice recording cannot be counted as regular correspondence. HRW has also called to receive visits from the ICRC and said that prolonged incommunicado detention of Shalit is cruel and inhumane and may amount to torture.

A U.N. fact-finding mission headed by Judge Richard Goldstone assigned to investigate the Gaza War, which released its report in September 2009, called for Shalit to be released. In June 2010, on the fourth anniversary of Shalit's capture, Human Rights Watch made a statement describing Hamas' treatment of Shalit as "cruel and inhuman" saying it illustrates the UN definition of torture and violates the international rules of war by prohibiting him from having contact with his family or visits from the Red Cross.

BUYcotters thwart economic terrorism

Yves Archambault owns a shoe store called Le Marcheur on St. Denis Street in Le Plateau, a hip neighbourhood in Montreal.

For the last 25 years, he’s been selling shoes from all over the world.

On Oct. 2, Archambault received a formal demand from a radical left-leaning organization threatening to picket in front of his shop to “make St. Denis an Israeli Apartheid Free Zone”.

These extremists did not want to see shoes made in Israel sold on the Plateau. More than that, they wanted a great purge of all products from the Jewish state.

Even though he is not Jewish and the Israeli shoes in his store represent less than 2% of his sales, Archambault refused to give in to this blackmail. He has been selling these quality shoes for over 15 years. Apolitical, he simply refused to accept a handful of ideologues dictating to him what to sell and not to sell.

Every Saturday since the beginning of October, in the best trading hours, a dozen activists have blocked the entrance of his store with anti-Israel signs and distribute tracts calling for the boycott of his store, harassing his clients.

On Dec. 11, a local Member of the National Assembly (MNA), Amir Khadir, joined the protesters with well-known communist leaders.

This elected official, paid by taxpayers, set about to harm a small storekeeper in his constituency who sells a legal product coming from a country with which Canada has a free-trade agreement.

From his involvement with an “Islamo-Marxist” organization to his public support of George Galloway, a propagandist paid by Iranian state TV, this is not Khadir’s first controversy on Middle East issues.

A non-practising Muslim born in Iran, Khadir co-leads the ultra-left party Quebec Solidaire and is the only Solidaire MNA.

He does not support certain Islamist causes out of religious conviction but participates instead in an anti-imperialism alliance between the extreme left and the Islamists that are coalescing everywhere else in the western world.

Even if polls suggest Khadir is currently the most popular MNA in Quebec, he did not gather support for his boycott campaign.

Last Saturday, my friends and I organized a “BUYcott.” We all went to buy a pair of shoes from Archambault. More than 150 people broke the picket-line and went to Le Marcheur.

We beat the economic terrorism of the radical left one pair of shoes at a time.

Many political columnists were also quick to support our BUYcott and condemn Khadir’s tactics of intimidation.

The BUYcotters reaction of outrage and the almost unanimous condemnation by the Quebec press is very reassuring.

Let’s remember Quebecers were the first in the whole Commonwealth to elect a Jew when they elected Ezechiel Hart MNA of Trois-Rivieres in 1807. Since it was not permitted for a Jew to occupy such a function at the time in the British Empire, another election was called and people from Trois-Rivieres re-elected Hart to the astonishment of our British rulers.

Khadir is not going to make Quebecers turn our backs today on our great heritage of a few centuries of tolerance and friendship with Jews.

— Duhaime is a freelance writer

To write to Mr. Chambault, the owner of the store, please CLIC here:
yvesa@boutiquelemarcheur.ca


http://www.torontosun.com/comment/columnists/eric_duhaime/2010/12/22/16651331.html

To go where no Israeli has gone before

Israeli whiz kids work on mini lunar lander as part of $20 million Google race.

Most people they meet raise an eyebrow or two after hearing their plan. But if you ask Yonatan Winetraub and Kfir Damari what they are doing these days, the answer is simple: “We are working on going to the moon.”

The two, in their 20s, are scientists: Winetraub works for Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) as a satellite engineer with a focus on nano-satellites, and Damari is a lecturer at the Israeli College of Management and is a communication-system engineer.

Together, they have come up with one of the more daring Israeli initiatives in recent years: to build a space vehicle that can fly to the moon – and win $20 million while they’re at it.

Sound a little difficult? That’s because it is. The idea came to the two and their friend Yariv, who works for an unnamed government agency, a few months ago after Google kicked off the Lunar X competition.

The challenge, open to privately-funded space teams, is to become the first to successfully launch, land and guide their vehicle across the surface of the moon and send images back to Earth.

The first team to succeed – there are currently 20 contestants – will win $20m. The second team will take home $5m. Another $4m. is being set aside as bonus prizes for successfully completing other missions, such as operating at night, traveling more than 5 kilometers over the lunar surface, succeeding in detecting water or landing near an Apollo site. Another $4m. is being set aside as bonus prizes for successfully completing other missions, such as operating at night, traveling more than 5 kilometers over the lunar surface, succeeding in detecting water or landing near an Apollo site.

No Israeli team had registered until Winetraub, Damari and Yariv got together. Now they have eight days left to collect $100,000 to sign up for the competition. The deadline for the launch is the end of 2012.

According to Winetraub, the idea is to launch a 5-kg. satellite the size of a Coke bottle on an industrial satellite launcher, and then fly it to the moon’s surface, where it will take pictures and transmit them back to Earth.

The vehicle, which will consist mostly of a fuel tank and a tiny engine, will also carry an Israeli flag.

“Failure is not an option,” Winetraub said. “Our concept is simple, and we believe that we will succeed in becoming the third country in the world to put a flag on the moon.”

In the meantime, the two have met with aerospace industry leaders and government officials to present their idea and seek support, either financial or scientific.

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Itzik Ben- Israel, head of the Israel Space Agency, said he was thinking of contributing to the program.

“These are talented people who have good intentions,” he said. “In the meantime, we are giving them moral support, and I am inclined to provide them with financial support as well.”

Lt.-Col. (res.) Danny Grossman, a former Israel Air Force pilot and aerospace expert, has also been enlisted for the project.

“America put a man on the moon and fired the imagination of a generation of Americans,” Grossman said, recalling his own youth before joining the air force. “This initiative will hopefully inspire a generation of Israelis and Jews around the world and project an image of deterrence.”

But what happens if they lose?

According to Damari, the team will likely go through with the launch.

“Even if we lose, nobody is going to get an Israeli flag on the moon before we do,” he said.

http://www.jpost.com/Sci-Tech/Article.aspx?id=200495

Israel submits complaint to UN on continued Gaza attacks

Ambassador Meron Reuben calls on Security Council to send Hamas "a clear and resolute message that these attacks are unacceptable."

Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Meron Reuben filed a complaint with the Security Council, following a series of Kassam rocket attacks on Ashkelon on Tuesday.

Reuben stated that Israel places full responsibility on Hamas, which is acting in direct violation of international law, and added the Jewish State will continue to exercise its right to self defense.

A Kassam rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip into the Ashkelon area on Tuesday morning, landing in Kibbutz Zikim. The rocket exploded near a kindergarten, as dozens of parents were dropping off their children at school, injuring a 14-year old girl.

The incident followed a spate of attacks emanating from Gaza in the previous days, encompassing the launch of some three rockets and 18 mortars into the regions of Eshkol and Ashkelon. These attacks included the launch of six mortars on Sunday at IDF forces operating near the Kerem Shalom Crossing.

Reuben's complaint followed a letter he sent to the UN earlier this month warning of a possible escalation of violence in the area.

"In a previous letter on 9 December 2010, I mentioned that the escalation of such attacks should be viewed with the utmost seriousness. With the intention of preventing the continued escalation of conflict, the Security Council, the Secretary-General, and the international community must send a clear and resolute message that these attacks are unacceptable," Reuben said in the complaint.

"In addition, the Security Council must give appropriate attention to the smuggling of arms into Gaza, which continues to fuel violence and instability in our region - in violation of numerous Security Council resolutions, including resolution 1860," he added.

Earlier on Tuesday, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.- Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi called the situation in Gaza “fragile and explosive.” Sources in the Southern Command told The Jerusalem Post that Hamas would likely prevent rocket fire deep into the Israeli home front, but continue targeting towns and IDF positions along the border.

“We have no guarantee that the situation won’t deteriorate if a rocket causes a large number of casualties,” Ashkenazi said during one of his final briefings to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=200525

Video's DNA could check piracy

Israeli researchers have developed a novel technique to track video piracy and nip it in the bud.

The technique is 'video DNA matching'. It detects aberrations in pirated videos in the same way that biologists detect mutations in the genetic code to determine an individual's family connections.

Alex Bronstein of Tel Aviv University's Department of Electrical Engineering, with his twin Michael, as also Ron Kimmel, has developed the solution to stop video pirates - treating video footage like DNA.

'It's not only members of the animal and plant kingdom that can have DNA,' says Bronstein who was inspired by sequencing tools used in bioinformatics labs, according to a Tel Aviv statement.

'If a DNA test can identify and catch criminals, we thought that a similar code might be applicable to video. If the code were copied and changed, we'd catch it.'

Of course, video does not have a real genetic code like members of the animal kingdom, so Bronstein and his team created a DNA analogue like a unique fingerprint that can be applied to video files.

The technology employs an invisible sequence and series of grids applied over the film, turning the footage into a series of numbers.

The tool can then scan the content of websites where pirated films are believed to be offered, pinpointing subsequent mutations of the original.

Video piracy occurs on a massive scale, causing the global film industry and the US economy loss of billions of dollars annually.

Production companies know their only hope in recouping stolen content is by automating the process. 'Video DNA' can provide a more accurate and useful form of this automation.

http://www.israelnews.net/story/722687/ht/Videos-DNA-could-check-piracy

Denzel Washington visits Israel

Critically-acclaimed American actor Denzel Washington arrived in Israel last Tuesday for a private visit with his actress wife Pauletta.

The two toured Jerusalem, where Pauletta visited the Padani jewelry store at the Mamilla Mall and purchased two red-gold wedding rings, inside which she had the couple's initials engraved. She also bought additional jewelry worth about $14,000.

Washington purchased wine, cigars and other gifts at the attractive, outdoor shopping venue.

The son of a Pentecostal minister, Washington is in Israel to visit his good friend of the past 20 years Dr. David Davis, who heads the Messianic Jewish congregation Kehilat HaCarmel in Haifa. The two met in drama school in New York and performed together in a Broadway show.

The Hollywood star is said to have flown to Israel on a private plane, stayed at the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem, toured the Western Wall and other holy sites in the capital, and enjoyed a taste of hummus.

Washington, 56, has won two Academy Awards and two Golden Globes and is considered one of the most popular actors in Hollywood. He has been married to Pauletta for almost 30 years and they have four children.

http://www.israel21c.org/201012218654/briefs/denzel-washington-visits-israel

Israeli security device wins top award

Briefcam

Twenty-four hours reduced to a few minutes.

Cameras as we know are everywhere these days. But what happens to the footage they record? Often nothing happens, because there's no one to sit and sift through the endless hours of video. It's usually only after a major disaster or attack that officials check the video, hoping to get clues as to whom or what caused the problem.

Briefcam's solution is its Video Synopsis product. Instead of watching the entire video, a viewer can see a synopsis - with the option of focusing in on objects or people of interest from a 24-hour period within a few minutes.

If viewers notice something odd in the behavior of an individual, they can focus in on that individual, and receive an index of all his or her movements in the entire range of footage. With Briefcam VS, security personnel have a more efficient way to watch and analyze footage, making it more likely that they will catch problems before they occur.

Israel's Briefcam recently won the 2010 Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award in the area of physical security for its invention, which offers an innovative solution to quick review of information from security cameras.

Surveillance cameras generate a prodigious amount of video that someone has to watch. Other video-surveillance technologies may address this challenge by fast-forwarding through recordings or capturing only moving images using motion detectors.

BriefCam, developed by Prof. Shmuel Peleg of the Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, takes a different approach.

The patented technology he developed, dubbed Video Synopsis, uses computer software that creates a synopsis of recorded information and generates a very short video that preserves the essential activities of the original video captured over a very long time period.

For example, the movement of vehicles passing through a security gate over many hours can be condensed into a few minutes, showing each vehicle's entry followed immediately by the next one.

"Five hours of video is not five hours anymore," says Peleg, who is also the company's chief scientist. "It's five minutes."

In recent years, numerous video surveillance technologies have emanated from Israel.

http://briefcam.com/
http://www.israel21c.com/

Christmas lights for environmental awareness

In an ironic twist, a Christmas tree fashioned of recycled bottles in the northern city of Haifa went up the day the nearby forests burned down.

On the day that industrial designer Hadas Itzcovitch's 38-foot-high Christmas tree crafted of 5,480 recycled plastic bottles was erected in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, one of the worst fires in the country's history ignited on the nearby Carmel Mountain. The fire caused the deaths of 44 people and destroyed an estimated five million trees.

Ironically the recycled Christmas tree, lit up by energy-efficient LED lights at night, sends a message about the importance of forests and environmental education. While the Carmel fire, set accidentally by a youngster, shows a growing need for environmental awareness in Israel.

When the fire broke out and began raging out of control, Itzcovitch asked the Haifa Municipality, which had commissioned the tree, if perhaps it wasn't the right time to put it up.

The tree was intended as a tribute to the three major religions that co-exist in Haifa and was to mark the upcoming Festival of Festivals. The event was being organized to celebrate Eid, Christmas and Hanukkah, representing Islam, Christianity and Judaism. As the fire raged, a decision was made to postpone the festival for a week.

"It took one month to build the tree," 30-year-old Itzcovitch tells ISRAEL21c. "While we were building it in the ground we saw the fire on the mountain." And they could smell it, too. "It was everywhere. I asked the city if perhaps we shouldn't put it up. They said if not now, it will be lost."

A tree twice as high

It was probably a good idea to go ahead. The police had already been sent to cordon off the street as the tree formed of recycled bottles collected from residents of the port city was hoisted at a busy intersection.

International media from all corners of the earth are writing about the recycled bottle Christmas tree, and it's important to Itzcovitch that they get the story right, and not report that it was developed in response to the fire, but rather commissioned before and coincidentally erected on the day the fire started.

Born and raised in a suburb of Haifa called Kiriyat Bialik, today Itzcovitch lives in Tel Aviv with her boyfriend and works as a freelance industrial designer. In between projects which include elements of green design, she lectures at nearby universities and colleges, teaching students from high-school age and up about innovations in recycled materials and energy efficiency.

The "green" Christmas tree idea was all hers. She told the city that with the same budget they'd set aside for their 20-foot Christmas tree, she could build one twice as high, using recycled materials. The committee was ecstatic, she reports.

"I told them I could take this budget and double the tree in height and make it with recycled bottles. And it would be good for the environment, too. They said 'build it as high as you can.'

A tree with a message

Enlisting the help of her handyman father, a retired businessman and artist from Kiriyat Haim near Haifa, Itzcovitch developed the vision, and her dad Ernest Itzcovitch helped to construct the tree, including its metal frame.

Itzcovitch junior studied industrial design at Israel's Holon Industrial Design School, subsequently earning a second degree in industrial design from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, a university in Haifa which focuses on science and new materials development.

Growing up in Haifa, the Carmel Forest was Itzcovitch's refuge, as it was for many other kids and their families in the city, who would explore the UNESCO protected bio-reserve when walking and picnicking in it on weekends and holidays.

She hopes her tree will be an important environmental message for all the people of Haifa: The goal of building this Christmas tree was to make the people of Haifa happy - to show that people can live in harmony - with nature, and with each other.

"My hope is to keep the tree growing every year because they plan on using it next year, too. It's a cone so it expands easily. I could add a half meter [1.6 feet] every year."

http://www.israel21c.org/201012198644/culture/christmas-lights-for-environmental-awareness