Last summer I poked fun at the boycott brigade with this mention of a team of Israeli researchers who are leading the field in part of the war against cancer, with an Israeli Arab at their head.
Well, it turns out the full story is much more fun than that original teaser. A patriotic Israeli Arab raking in millions of Euros and $ for his path-braking research into very-early detection of cancer through smell, heading multiple teams of researchers from the world over, all based at Haifa's Technion, which he chose over some of the topmost universities in the world because he's from here.
If he succeeds he'll probably one day get a Nobel prize, at which point we'll have the interesting conundrum of counting him as an Israeli or an Arab (Israelis sometimes get Nobels, Arabs almost never).
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Twitter
Personal musings on Israel, Jewish matters, history and how they all affect each other
Previously posted articles
- Hebron and Jerusalem
- Jo Ehrlich in Wonderland
- Warsaw and History
- On the Goldstone Report
- Lozowick on Cesarani on Eichmann
- Solidarity in Poland, 1980-1992
- Review of David Bell and Drew Gilpin Faust
- Reading Israel's Official Report on Gaza
- The End of Israel?
- How to Reach Peace in Israel/Palestine
- Sylvia Tessler-Lozowick on Gilad Shalit
- Israeli Brutality in Gaza?
- The Great Partition
- Meir Deals with Evil
- The End of Poverty
- The Brothers who Enabled Obama
- Dreams from His Father
- The Malice of Lawrence of Cyberia
- Till the End of the Land
- Parsing The Economist
- The Dead in the Library: A True Story
- Candidate Obama?
- Out Stealing Horses
- Lozowick on Siegman on Israel-Palestine
- Teenagers
- Roadblocks
- On Filing Away Germany's Jews
- Exchange with Juan Cole
- Ian McEwen, Saturday
- A Thousand Splendid Suns
- War and Morality
- Daf Yomi - On Study of the Talmud
- Raul Hilberg (1926-2007)
Contact
yaacov dot lozowick at gmail dot com
Labels
- American Politics (126)
- Antisemitism (237)
- BBC (41)
- Books (95)
- Boycott (34)
- characters (21)
- Daf Yomi (77)
- Durban 2 (4)
- Goldstone Report (58)
- Greenwald (11)
- Guardian (152)
- Haredi Society (21)
- Holocaust survivors (25)
- IDF-Achikam (24)
- IDF-general (34)
- Innovation (25)
- International Law (135)
- Iran (56)
- Israel at War (344)
- Israeli Democracy (313)
- ITS (2)
- Jerusalem (166)
- Jewish American-Israeli Issues (106)
- Jewish Arab blog (6)
- Jewish Identity (182)
- Juan Cole (45)
- Land of Israel (49)
- Linked Articles (8)
- Media on Mideast (243)
- Mideast General (167)
- Miscellaneous (308)
- Mondoweiss (37)
- Multilateral Sovereignty (18)
- Peace Negotiations (330)
- Rational Discourse? (404)
- Religion (25)
- Shirim Ivri'im (38)
- Shoah History (48)
- Silverstein (4)
- Terrorism (92)
- The Human Condition (249)
- Travel (21)
- Warfare (59)
Blogs
Blog Archive
- November 2020 (1)
- May 2019 (1)
- November 2018 (1)
- May 2018 (1)
- April 2018 (2)
- March 2018 (1)
- December 2017 (2)
- October 2017 (1)
- June 2017 (1)
- March 2017 (3)
- January 2017 (2)
- October 2016 (4)
- July 2016 (1)
- June 2016 (4)
- May 2016 (8)
- April 2016 (1)
- March 2016 (2)
- February 2016 (3)
- October 2015 (2)
- August 2015 (2)
- July 2015 (1)
- June 2015 (2)
- May 2015 (2)
- April 2015 (1)
- March 2015 (4)
- January 2015 (5)
- November 2014 (2)
- October 2014 (1)
- September 2014 (3)
- August 2014 (4)
- July 2014 (4)
- May 2014 (8)
- April 2014 (2)
- January 2014 (1)
- December 2013 (2)
- November 2013 (1)
- October 2013 (5)
- August 2013 (3)
- July 2013 (2)
- June 2013 (3)
- May 2013 (6)
- April 2013 (4)
- March 2013 (2)
- February 2013 (4)
- January 2013 (5)
- December 2012 (1)
- November 2012 (12)
- October 2012 (4)
- July 2012 (5)
- June 2012 (2)
- May 2012 (1)
- April 2012 (3)
- December 2011 (2)
- October 2011 (1)
- August 2011 (1)
- June 2011 (5)
- May 2011 (35)
- April 2011 (46)
- March 2011 (58)
- February 2011 (41)
- January 2011 (43)
- December 2010 (30)
- November 2010 (45)
- October 2010 (55)
- September 2010 (53)
- August 2010 (59)
- July 2010 (65)
- June 2010 (68)
- May 2010 (70)
- April 2010 (88)
- March 2010 (56)
- February 2010 (70)
- January 2010 (70)
- December 2009 (77)
- November 2009 (53)
- October 2009 (78)
- September 2009 (56)
- August 2009 (50)
- July 2009 (51)
- June 2009 (65)
- May 2009 (41)
- April 2009 (51)
- March 2009 (57)
- February 2009 (49)
- January 2009 (102)
- December 2008 (52)
- November 2008 (37)
- October 2008 (30)
- September 2008 (17)
- August 2008 (36)
- July 2008 (57)
- June 2008 (45)
- May 2008 (56)
- April 2008 (42)
- March 2008 (41)
- February 2008 (48)
- January 2008 (35)
- December 2007 (49)
- November 2007 (54)
- October 2007 (49)
- September 2007 (37)
- August 2007 (59)
- July 2007 (4)
16 comments:
"If you were to say to me: 'Replicate the Technion as a microcosm for the 7 million citizens in Israel,' I would tell you that peace would be here within two years. But unfortunately the whole country is not the Technion."
Spot on.
Alex
that's not "spot on" that's somebody being incapable of not making himself look ridiculous by imagining himself capable of turning "elegant" phrases.
Reality based people are capable of moments of pure happyness, others have to chew the cud until they find an argument that allows them to imagine a hair in the soup.
As you seem to want to spend the rest of your presumably still young life with the latter crowd I am interested to know: do you people ever experience moments of unmitigated bliss?
Silke
http://www.achgut.com/dadgdx/images/karikaturen/persoenliches_Hemmnis_medium.jpg
(people with experience in reality often have a blockade against the correct attitude)
I would say it's clear that he must be counted as an Israeli, because he evidently feels proud enough of his Israeliness (Israelity?) to choose the Technion over other universities.
I hope he does win a Nobel. That work sounds amazing.
I would demand that all the Arabs and all American academic institutions boycott whatever medical protocols derived from this.
There's a chemosensor that uses a chunk of a beetle's nose. Somewhere in Dean ing, maybe 'Loose Cannon'.
Bruce
Alex,
Would it ever occur to you to think instead "Replicate the Technion as a microcosm for 10% of the 340 million citizens of the Arab League and peace would be here within two years"?
For me, the stand-out quote was this: "It goes to show how beautiful scientific work is. Science can include different people under the same umbrella. There are no barriers between people." This is what the good souls of the BDS movement are bent on destroying. You could show that quote and Haick's work to them, and all you would get back is some variant of You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." Creating barriers — between Israelis and the rest of the world — is the whole point. Not that one of them would dream of depriving him- or herself of the fruits of Haick's research, if it eventually succeeds.
Paul
Alex' morals are so highly evolved that they are immune to any argument which would easily make a mere mortal think
Silke
Dr. Haick is doing wonderful work and he could ultimately be responsible for extending millions of lives. We should all be rooting for him to succeed and all Israelis should take pride in whatever he accomplishes.
The issue I will address next is small potatoes compared to the scientific research that Dr. Haick is doing. But Haaretz chose to open its story with his treatment by Israel, so while the door is open...
Given Dr. Haick's devotion to working in Israel, I can understand that he would be hurt (and even at times angered) by getting searched extensively at airports or denied housing in an Israeli city. That said, it would be nice if he (or another prominent Israeli Arab) would be more willing to acknowledge, as Yaacov discussed in "Right to Exist," that Israeli Arabs haven't done as much as they should in fulfilling their part of the bargain of citizenship, and that the hatreds they harbor toward Jews are not constructive to any Israelis, Arab, Jewish or otherwise. For example, neither Dr. Haick nor his father would not likely have had the same opportunities in Arab countries, and that there are justifiable reasons for Israeli security concerns.
I guess it just doesn't happen in Arab culture that he might look at what his fellow Arabs could be doing to be more loyal citizens of their country, or to admit his own group has taken steps to hurt relations between Arab and Jewish communities as well. Jews, on the other hand, could afford to take a day off--or maybe a century off--from self-criticism.
Dr. Haick is a great personal example to other Israeli Arabs...and I guess blaming the "right wingers" and telling fellow Arabs to take advantage of economic opportunities may be his way of saying it. And perhaps he feels he is obligated to criticize Israelis, if for nothing else so as not to be seen as a traitor in the Arab community or make life more difficult on his family.
Am I the only one who upon reading the post wondered immediately if he was Christian? The fact that he is Christian does make this seem more likely that it is an isolated example than the start of a movement of Israeli Arabs to take a different approach to their Jewish countrymen. But all great movements have to start somewhere. And while Dr. Haick's work deserves our greatest appreciation and support, I am not holding my breath that this will usher in a new era of harmonious relationships between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel, especially considering how hostile are Muslim attitudes toward Israel.
Paul M - yes, if I lived in the Arab League and not Israel.
Silke - I honestly didn't expect such an innocent remark to draw such fire.
Alex
I already know that innocence, complete innocence, super innocence, totally innocent innocence is amongst your special virtues
I keep that in mind whenever I read one of yours thus no need to confirm it ...
Silke
You take a fundamentally positive story, Alex, about an incredible Israeli non-Jew whose loyalty remains to Israel despite its flaws, and focus laser-like on the negative aspect. You do it, furthermore, not merely to say that Israel, like every country, has problems to address, but in a way that suggests there is no peace between Israel and its enemies solely because not enough Jews want to coexist with Arabs. But peace is not mainly — let alone purely — in Israeli hands, so "I do it because I'm an Israeli" is not a satisfactory answer.
It might be a Jewish trait to focus obsessively on ourselves. If so, it's not one of our more admirable ones. Do you see a prominent tendency in any Arab state or any Muslim one, or any other for that matter, to say "Forget Israel, if only we had perfected ourselves peace would reign"? When a world of butchers, hypocrites and bullies is poking you in the chest and saying "If you're not perfect you're not good enough", "It's all our fault, we're not perfect" is not a winning attitude, in the Darwinian sense.
Another example of israel taking advantage of the Palestinian people, and in this case, Palestinian genius. I wouldnt be publicizing this if I were you
Tony Rabbi
you forgot the Christians stole him first, thus a vile Christian-Judeo Conspiracy is behind it all. You should inform W&M immediately, especially since I've read that Mearsheimer recently held Israelis responsible for all Arab misery - wants to get his own Christian self out of the line of fire, the coward ;-)
Silke
Silke,
Are you suggesting the Crusader-Zionist alliance has something to do with all this?
Silke,
As any Arab leader would tell you, the entire conspiracy has been documented in the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. If only the rest of the world would read this document like the Arabs do, then they would understand how the enemies of Islam are plotting Islam's destruction. The Jews perpetrated Sept. 11, 2001, along with their Crusader allies, in order to get support for their war plans targeting the Islamic world.
Everyone knows this...
well Four
I don't give a hoot to thoughts of who is behind all this or rather there are more claims of authorship of this or that or the other than my poor brain can handle.
For me it has reached the stage which Carl Zuckmayer quotes his Austrian house keeper shortly before he left Austria as having summed it all up:
in difficult times some decent people just get a bit more decent
- and I am hubristic enough to aspire to be allowed into that club.
Silke
Post a Comment