Middle East > Israel > Social / CSR

Social / CSR in Israel

  • Israel to spend $3 billion more to improve living standards of Arab minority

    ISRAEL, 2016/01/06 Israel will spend around 13 billion shekels ($3.3 billion) over the next five years to improve the standard of living of its Arab minority and narrow gaps with its Jewish people. Arabs comprise nearly 21 % of Israel's 8.46 million people. The Arab Joint inventory - which combined four smaller political parties - is the third major in Israel's 120-seat parliament with 13 seats. In a plan approved by the cabinet, investment will be boosted in education, infrastructure, culture, sports and transportation in Arab areas that have long been neglected or are not up to the same standards of Jewish citizens.
  • Turkey–Israel Normalization: Why Ever Not?

    ISRAEL, 2016/01/03 “Normalization” is a dirty word part Palestinian leaders, of both Fatah and Hamas persuasions. It implies acceptance of Israel’s right to exist and, by some perverse logic, a downgrading of Palestinian rights. It must have come as something of a shock, therefore, to read the remarks of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on December 13 about Turkey’s next relations with Israel: “I have by presently said that once the compensation and the embargo problems were resolved, the normalization process may start. This normalization process would be good for us, Israel, Palestine and all region.” To be honest, there really is no fundamental reason for relations between Turkey and Israel to be anything but cordial. Indeed for fifty years following the founding of the national of Israel, cordiality was the keynote. In March 1949 Turkey was the initial Muslim country to recognize the new national.
  • The government has been asked to cut poverty by 40% in order to reach the OECD average.

    ISRAEL, 2015/12/20 The economy is losing NIS 48 billion a year due to poverty, according to a study by humanitarian aid organization Latet. The study, conducted by the ERI research institute, examined the overall cost to the economy, both direct and indirect, of poverty. According to the report, the economy loses NIS 36b. in opportunity cost, or the loss from the potential earning capacity of people who grew up in poor households, while NIS 12b. is lost due to the direct and indirect costs, such as public spending on assistance to populations living in poverty.
  • Turkey’s Israel charm offensive is all about Russia

    ISRAEL, 2015/12/16 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s new charm offensive toward Israel and his country’s Jews seems to show how a crisis over its downing of a Russian aircraft last month may help improve Istanbul’s dragging rapprochement efforts with the Jewish national. Next years of harsh rhetoric and actions against Israel, suddenly the ruling Islamist AK Party has allowed the initial ever public Hanukkah event to take place on Sunday. Erdogan followed that up on Monday by speaking positively of normalizing relations with Israel.
  • South African Jewish Board of Deputies Celebrates South African Democracy

    ISRAEL, 2015/11/23 Today, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies Gauteng Council celebrated the “20th anniversary of South Africa’s democracy”. One of their invited speakers was South African President Jacob Zuma who just recently invited Hamas to visit with him. He acknowledged, that at the same time as all Black liberation movement in South Africa had been forced underground, “Jewish patriots provided safe havens.” He expressed appreciation for what the Jewish community had done to promote liberty and equality. He said that, “South Africa shuns all forms of discrimination, inclunding anti-Semitism. ” However he was adamant that his promotion of Hamas and Palestine did in no way diminish his “support for Israel.”. He believes strongly in a two-national solution, using the 1967 borders and giving East Jerusalem to the Arabs. Zuma, however, may not be much of a player in South Africa for too much longer. A recent survey found that the majority of the country wants him out of office.
  • Tovei Ha'ir seniors' residence Chaya Subar (left) and Tobie Goldman with Nepali caregiver Sima Bhusal, Jerusalem

    ISRAEL, 2015/05/09 Sima Bhusal was far from home at the same time as an earthquake hit her native Nepal on April 25. She was, however, relieved to be with her “family” in Israel in the aftermath of the natural disaster, as she learned additional about how her relatives and friends in Kathmandu are coping and tries to help them from here. Bhusal has been in the country for five years, and has worked the last three as a caregiver at Jerusalem’s Tovei Ha’ir seniors’ residence, whose staff and residents she considers her second family.
  • How Israeli Life-Saving Tech Is Leading Rescue Efforts In Nepal

    ISRAEL, 2015/05/03 Five days next one of history’s most devastating earthquakes hit Nepal, nations near and far are pouring in funds and personnel to address the national of emergency. Leading the pack in terms of medical and rescue personnel on the ground is Israel, with an aid convoy of 260 personnel, inclunding about forty doctors. While this isn’t the initial time that Israel has stepped in to following a major international weather event, the Israeli team is using innovative and ingenious technology to rescue additional people from the areas of destruction and to provide initial-class medical care to those who need it most.
  • Religion, geopolitics and power along the River Jordan

    JORDAN, 2015/04/22 Ahead of the 2015 Skoll World Forum in Oxford, UK (April 15-17), SkollWorldForum.org partnered with the Financial Time'  I stand on the banks of the River Jordan just north of its confluence with the Yarmouk. Behind me is the Sea of Galilee in Israel. On the east bank is the Kingdom of Jordan. Up the Yarmouk lies Syria; Damascus, the Syrian capital, is physically closer to me than my home town, Tel Aviv. Downriver is the West Bank, the Palestinian Territories, where the Jordan River ends at the Dead Sea. In Hebrew the location where I am standing is called Naharyim, meaning “two rivers”. This place has a complex history. On one hand Naharyim and the River Jordan speak to a heritage of freedom and leadership reborn. From presently on the area has as well been a battlefield, in both ancient and modern times, where world powers have clashed to the detriment of all region. With extremist Islamic groups today on the edge of the Jordan River basin, can the efforts underway to rehabilitate the river bring together odd bedfellows to motivate evolution and bring new hope?
  • Oxfam Study Finds Richest 1% Is Likely to Control Half of Global Wealth by 2016

    AFGHANISTAN, 2015/01/20 The richest 1 % are likely to control additional than half of the globe’s total wealth by next year, the charity Oxfam reported in a study released on Monday. The warning about deepening world inequality comes just as the world’s business elite prepare to meet this week at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The 80 wealthiest people in the world all own $1.9 trillion, the statement found, nearly the same all shared by the 3.5 billion people who occupy the bottom half of the world’s gain scale. (Last year, it took 85 billionaires to equal that figure.) And the richest 1 % of the people, who number in the millions, control nearly half of the world’s total wealth, a share that is as well increasing.
  • Israelis are generally bullish on their country’s economy,

    ISRAEL, 2014/09/30 Israelis are generally bullish on their country’s economy, something that can’t be said for a lot of nations in both the West and developing world, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center. The survey, conducted in April and May, analyzes the opinions of 48,643 respondents in 44 nations. Some 59% of Israelis said the economy was in good shape, up from 43% in 2013. But opinions were mixed at the same time as it came to the national of the country in general – 50% said Israel’s general situation wasn’t good, compared with 49% who said the country was doing fine.