Israel Baseball Update

A little background from the IBL website, “The Israel Baseball League is the professional baseball league of Israel. In the IBL’s inaugural season, there will be six teams — The Bet Shemesh Blue Sox, The Modi’in Miracle, The Netanya Tigers, The Petach Tikva Pioneers, The Ra’anana Express, and The Tel Aviv Lightning. Among the managers of the IBL’s teams are former Major League stars Art Shamsky, Ken Holtzman, and Ron Blomberg.”

Today from Haaretz:

It may not be the real thing, but Israeli baseball still hits home

By Daphna Berman

It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon at the baseball field on Kibbutz Gezer and Lee Weinberg admits he almost forgot where he was. “It kind of reminds me of the field of dreams,” he said, as he motioned to the expanse of sunflower fields beyond the fences.

Weinberg, who is visiting from St. Louis, was referring to the Kevin Costner classic about a farmer who built a baseball diamond in the middle of his Iowa corn fields, a film that made legendary the phrase, “If you build it, he will come.”

Continue reading Israel Baseball Update…

We’re On the You Tubes

Today we’re officially launching our You Tube video channel. Yeah, that’s right, it’s finally official.

Looking Good

Israelis are notorious for their good-looks. Whether it’s the Mediterranean sun, intense military training, or high consumption of hummus, it’s clear that Israelis know how to flaunt their goods. And celebrities are no exception. Here’s a list of the hottest Israeli icons keeping their country at the forefront of the world fashion scene.

Think Israel

What do you think? We think it’s certainly better than the circa 2000 “Who Knew” commercial that keeps popping up during Leno with uneven sound quality. C’mon Tourism, you guys get all the big bucks…

New Israeli Food

Grab some olive oil and roll up your sleeves, because Israel’s best food recipes are now revealed in Janna Gur’s fresh cookbook, The Book of New Israeli Food. The renowned editor of Israel’s most popular food and wine magazine, Al Hashulchan (On the Table), serves up more than 150 traditional and innovative recipes by talented local chefs. From stories and images of Israel to tips on secret ingredients and serving suggestions, Gur’s latest project is sure to dish out the good stuff.

The Book of New Israeli Food is available at Steimatzky book stores and Tzomet Sfarim chains across Israel. Or purchase it online.

Now if only we had Israel’s sweet produce on our tables, too.

Vered in Da’ House

Vered, the New-York based Israeli singer-songwriter, is set to unveil her third album this September. The indie, folk-rock musician definitely knows how to draw a crowd with her free-spirited acoustic tunes.

In one of her recent performances at a venue in downtown Manhattan, Vered joked onstage about the hassle of having to renew her Israeli passport that week. And to the delight of every man in the room, she added: “Yes, I am Israeli. And I was in the army.” The entire crowd clapped and cheered. Somehow, that army bit always does the trick.

Check out Vered’s MySpace page to sample some tracks from her unreleased 2007 album.

Israel Provides Care to Sudanese

Israel Provides Eye-care Treatment for South Sudanese Refugees in Kenya

Over the past few months the Center for International Cooperation (MASHAV) at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has been in touch with the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Nairobi to offer assistance to South Sudanese refugees at the Kakuma refugee camp in Northern Kenya. The Kakuma camp, located in Kenya about 50 kilometers from the Sudanese border, houses over 75,000 people, mostly South Sudanese refugees.

Dr. Yossi Baratz, MASHAV’s medical projects coordinator in Africa in cooperation with the UNHCR set up a temporary eye clinic near the camp utilizing medical material purchased beforehand by MASHAV. The clinic serves as the base for two Israeli ophthalmologists Dr. Drora Zarfati from Ha’Emek Hospital in Afula and Dr. Nir Zaider from Rambam Hospital in Haifa, who arrived on a two-week mission on July 2nd, 2007, to perform eye-sight restoring surgical procedures, and treat ocular diseases.

For many years MASHAV has been conducting blindness prevention and eye-care missions in partner countries. These missions, designed to treat patients suffering from various degrees of blindness and ocular disease, are undertaken by teams of 2 Israeli ophthalmologists and operate on the premises of local hospitals or clinics. Hundreds of surgical procedures are performed by the visiting Israeli teams which work together with local staff, restoring sight to many of the patients. Israeli ophthalmologists also train the local personnel, and ophthalmologic equipment and supplies are donated by the Government of Israel.

Stars Wish Peres a Bit of Luck

New York Mag Says We’re the Best

Maxim & Beyond

Our good friends at Israel 21c are so much more articulate then we’ll ever be. Alas, we let them explain our behavior as of late…

From THE JERUSALEM POST:

Our ‘human-lens’ approach to hasbara

By: Amy Friedkin and Larry Weinberg,

Suppose for a minute that an Israeli research team found an alternative energy source that would reduce world reliance on oil by 60% and that the breakthrough was reported in a scientific journal and then crossed over into the general press in America.

If pro-Israel advocates then used that small piece of reality to show that most people’s perceptions of Israel are different from the reality, could anyone possible object? Of course not, yet in a way, that’s pretty much what happened when a recent photo feature of Israeli women ran in Maxim, a magazine aimed at young American men.

Now that the balagan has settled down and the more than 2,000,000 young men who read Maxim each month have seen their pre-conceptions about Israel explode and help create in them an awareness that there is more to Israel than a terrible, ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, we can look at why the Maxim feature is a very successful communications enterprise.

First, let us clearly state that we agree with those, including Jonathan Tobin in his Post op-ed “Lost is the message” (July 1), who say that the conflict is Israel’s most important and challenging issue, and let us also agree that it is vital to challenge those who hate, demonize and de-legitimize Israel.

Continue reading Maxim & Beyond…