Researcher Yitzhak Paz, of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Ben-Gurion University, informed LiveScience.com the structure could date back more than 4,000 years. The “effort invested in such an enterprise is indicative of a complex, well-organized society, with planning skills and economic ability,” the researchers wrote in their journal paper.

Close inspection by scuba diving revealed that the structure is made of basalt boulders up to 1 meter long with no apparent construction pattern and no signs of cutting or chiseling. A possible interpretation for the structure is related to the fact that it attracts fish and thus may be interpreted as a part of a marine-based economy. If this is the case, the structure must have been built as an underwater structure, the archaeologists wrote. Such structures built of stone are thought to be ancient fish nurseries that are well known in the Sea of Galilee and are found near the shores at regular intervals. However, they are significantly smaller than the structure revealed recently, with diameters of up to 4 meters.

An alternative scenario is that the structure was built onshore, when the water level was lower than today. A report on LiveScience.com stated the structure appears to be a giant cairn, with rocks piled on top of each other. Structures like this are known from elsewhere in the world and are sometimes used to mark burials, according to the report. Researchers do not know if the newly discovered structure was used for this purpose.

According to the Christian belief, Herod slaughtered infants in Bethlehem on hearing of the birth of Jesus. He was also believed to have killed three of his own sons and one of his wives, as well as many political foes. He was, in the words of first century historian Flavius Josephus, “equally cruel to everyone, a slave to his temper who distorted justice.” This ego, however, combined with rare organizational and political talents, was what pushed him to demonstrate his grandeur to both his Jewish subjects in Jerusalem and fellow rulers across the Roman empire, by building monumental palaces and renovating the Jewish Second Temple.

An new exhibition at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum sheds new light on the life and death of “Herod the Great”, the ancient king by focusing on his stunning archaeological legacy and whose empire sought to straddle imperial Rome and a flourishing Jewish culture. The exhibition is described by Israel Museum’s director James Snyder as the museum’s “most ambitious” archaeological undertaking and the first ever to focus on Herod.

It takes visitors on a journey that starts at the winter palace in Jericho and ends at Herodium, a hollowed-out hill near Bethlehem where he built a palace and fortress. The meticulous reconstruction showcases the height of Roman fashion and craft work from a stone bath and patterned floors to a set of jugs for holding the finest delicacies imported from Europe.

Among the 250 artifacts on display is a decorated cornice from Herod’s most grandiose undertaking: the expansion of the Second Temple. Three-dimensional video exhibits use aerial photography to show how Herod’s massive structures would have appeared today. In the Herodium, away from the religious centre of Jerusalem, one could feel free to enjoy exquisite wall paintings and frescos at his palace. These were replete with images of animals and people, which Judaism views as idolatrous. Behind a row of giant columns stands the centerpiece of the exhibition: a reconstruction of the king’s burial chamber at Herodium.

Herod’s greatness came from him retaining the delicate balance between the western and eastern cultures he represented, Snyder stated. “At the same time that Herod managed to have strong diplomatic ties to the home base (Rome), he enabled the flourishing here of a local culture which was Second Temple period Judaism.” “That delicate balance is really a remarkable thing to see in history, and Herod accomplished that.”

Roi Porat, a Hebrew University archaeologist who worked on the excavation of Herodium, stated Herod had tried to resolve the internal conflict of belonging to two opposing camps. “On the one hand, he wanted to be a Jewish king, and on the other, he wanted to be the King of Judaea for the Romans.” “He tried to win the sympathy of both sides by building a holy site of worship for the Jews and by building the largest temple for the Romans.” Everything about Herod was extreme, he stated: his diplomatic skills, his financial abilities and his ambitious construction projects, which included six desert palaces, the Temple and the port of Caesarea.

Hebrew University archaeologist Ehud Netzer spent four decades searching for Herod’s burial site on the mount, announcing he found the first evidence of its location in 2007. However, three years later, he fell to his death during an initial tour of the site. The museum has dedicated the exhibition entitled “Herod the Great – The King’s Final Journey” to Netzer’s memory.

The ghetto initially held some 380,000 Jews who were cramped into tight living spaces. At its peak, the ghetto housed about a half a million Jews, stated Havi Dreifuss, a researcher at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial who has studied the ghetto. Life in the ghetto included random raids, confiscations and abductions by Nazi soldiers. Disease and starvation were rampant, and bodies often appeared on the streets.

The 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising was the first large-scale rebellion against the Nazis in Europe and the single greatest act of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. Though guaranteed to fail, it became a symbol of struggle against impossible conditions, illustrated a refusal to succumb to Nazi atrocities and inspired other acts of uprising and underground resistance by Jews and non-Jews alike.

The resistance movement began to grow after the deportation of July 22, 1942, when 265,000 men, women and children were rounded up and later killed at the Treblinka death camp. As word of the Nazi genocide spread, those who remained behind no longer believed German promises that they would be sent to forced labour camps. A small group of rebels began to spread calls for resistance, carrying out isolated acts of sabotage and attacks. Some Jews began defying German orders to report for deportation.

The Nazis entered the ghetto on April 19, 1943, the eve of the Passover holiday. Three days later, the Nazis set the ghetto ablaze, turning it into a fiery death trap, but the Jewish fighters kept up their struggle for nearly a month. The Jewish fighters who had fortified themselves in bunkers and hiding places managed to kill 16 Nazis and wound almost 100, states Dreifuss. They were ultimately brutally vanquished.

Mordechai Anielewicz, the resistance leader and others died inside the bunker on 18 Mila Street, which later became the title of a famous novel by Leon Uris that fictionalized the events. “It was a moral victory. No one believed the Jews would fight back,” stated Dreifuss. “It’s amazing that after three years of Nazi occupation, starvation and illness, these people found the strength to disobey the Nazi orders, stand up and fight back.” Anielewicz, who was in his early 20s, became a heroic figure in Israel, with a village and streets across the nation named in his honour.

Two days before her comrades embarked on an uprising that came to symbolize Jewish resistance against the Nazis in World War II, 14-year-old Aliza Mendel got her orders: Escape from the Warsaw Ghetto. The end was near. Nazi troops had encircled the ghetto, and the remaining Jewish rebels inside were prepared to die fighting. They had few weapons, and they felt there was no point in giving one of them to a teenage girl whose main task to that point had been distributing leaflets.

“They told me I was too young to fight,” states the survivor, now 84, who uses her married name, Aliza Vitis-Shomron. “They said, ‘You have to leave and tell the world how we died fighting the Nazis. That is your job now.’” Vitis-Shomron remembers Anielewicz well. She states he was a tall, charismatic leader of a younger generation who refused to submit quietly to the Nazis as their parents did.”His theory was, ‘don’t get used to what is happening. Don’t accept it.’” “The Nazis wanted to turn us into slaves, and he said that only free people could resist.” She’s been doing that ever since, publishing a memoir about life in the ghetto and lecturing about the revolt and its legendary leader, Mordechai Anielewicz.

The approach put Vitis-Shomron at odds with her parents, who objected to her activity in the youth movement. Often she would defy the Nazi curfew and only return home in the morning. She narrowly escaped S.S. officers in the streets as she posted underground leaflets calling on Jews to resist or escape.

She stated the hardest part for her was escaping before the uprising began, joining her mother and younger sister in their hideout on the Polish side of town outside the ghetto. She remembers watching the red skies above the burning ghetto, where her friends were waging war. “If it was up to me, I would have stayed behind and fought to the death with them. I had no fear,” she stated. “The uprising represented Jewish pride. It was us saying, ‘we will not die the way you want us to. We will die the way we want to, as free people.’”

Vitis-Shomron was later captured and sent the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with her mother and sister. They all survived and eventually made it to Israel. Her father was deported from the ghetto and killed in a Nazi death camp. While nearly all her friends perished, she survived the ghetto and the later period in the Nazi concentration camp. She made it to Israel, married and has three children, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

On April 7,2013, 70 years after the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Vitis-Shomron is set to speak on behalf of Holocaust survivors at the official ceremony marking Israel’s annual Holocaust memorial day. “It’s a day of deep sorrow for me, because I remember all my friends in the (resistance) movement who gave their lives,” states Vitis-Shomron. “But it was also a wonderful act of sacrifice by those who gave up their lives without even trying to save themselves. The goal was to show that we would not go down without a response.”

Today, Vitis-Shomron volunteers for Yad Vashem, collecting pages of testimony from fellow survivors that help build the museum’s depository of names of the victims. Despite her own past, she claims not to have experienced the psychological damage that plague other survivors. “I never saw myself as a victim. I was on the active side, the resisting side,” she stated. “It helped me cope.”

While the world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, the date of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. Israel’s annual Holocaust memorial day coincides with the Hebrew date of the Warsaw ghetto uprising highlighting the role it plays in the country’s psyche. Even the day’s official name, “Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day” alludes to the image of the Jewish warrior upon which the state was re-established.

The Warsaw ghetto battle contrasts with the image of Jews meekly marching to their deaths. Israel has wrestled with the competing images for decades. After re-establishing their state in 1948, three years after the end of the war, Israelis preferred to emphasize the heroic resistance fighters, though their numbers were relatively small. In recent years they have come around to recognizing the overwhelming tragedy of the murder of millions of Jews and the traumas of the survivors who still live along them.

Online: http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/warsaw_ghetto_testimonies/index.asp

According to an Israeli government source: “Although there are no diplomatic relations between Israel and Hamas, there are many occasions when requests for help based on purely medical decisions taken in Gaza are granted by Israel for humanitarian reasons.” It’s hard to imagine that, if the tables were turned, a Hamas government would say the same.

Over the last few years Israel has granted an increasing number of entry permits to Palestinians in need of medical attention. According to the World Health Organization, in February 2012, 91.5% of Palestinian requests for medical treatment in Israel were approved and carried out. According to a report released by Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, in 2011 Israel issued 197,713 permits to Palestinians from the West Bank in need of medical treatment and for their companions, representing a 13% increase from the previous year. In addition 9,245 Palestinians from Gaza received medical care in Israel in 2011 which was a 5% increase compared to 2010. An additional 9,111 permits were provided for family members from Gaza to accompany patients to hospitals.

The Israeli government and hospitals also hold workshops for Israeli and Palestinian doctors, provide training courses for doctors from the West Bank, airlift Palestinians in need from the West Bank, and coordinate outings and activities for Palestinian children in Israeli hospitals.

The movie shows Liss entering the cave, followed by a lighting technician and cameraman. The three first pass through a narrow passage and then enter the cave with the skeletal remains. As soon as Liss left the cave, Antiquities Authority (IAA) staff resealed the entrance to it. Samples need to be taken from the site and dated. Liss raised the possibility that the skeletons were the remains of 6,000 Jews, mostly women and children, killed on the Temple Mount when the Romans destroyed the Second Temple.

The massacre is described in the writings of Josephus Flavius, who defected from the Jewish to the Roman side and witnessed the destruction.”The Romans stayed on the Temple Mount for a month after the destruction of the Temple until going on to conquer the upper city [today's Jewish Quarter].

Light is beamed at the sample in long pulses, which shorten when the beam reaches the desired plane, producing the needed illumination, according to the two scientists. In this manner, a single exposure to a light source can illuminate an entire brain area. The method allows for outstanding precision. Pulses lasting several femtoseconds in which each femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second, hence target specific neural network components in a millimeter-thick sample of brain tissue.

Dr. Karl Kilborn, co-president of 3i. intend to incorporate temporal focusing in several upcoming products designed for optogenetics, as well as for other photomanipulation applications. In all such applications, a simultaneous illumination of numerous cells, or numerous parts of one cell in a single plane, is critical. It is essential for understanding the behavior of complex neural circuits or other biological phenomena that occur too fast for studying them with sequential illumination approaches.

The research of both scientists is being supported by numerous sources. A licensing agreement for developing the invention into a commercial product has been signed between Yeda, Weizmann’s technology transfer arm, and Intelligent Imaging Innovactions (3i) in the United States.

Shamir made his reputation as a leader in the days before the state’s re-establishment, with his participation in the uprising against British Mandate control of the Land of Israel. In 1940, he joined the Lehi (National Military Organization), the most hardline of three Jewish movements resisting British mandatory authorities and taking over the Lehi leadership after the British killed its founder. Captured twice, he escaped from two British detention camps and returned to resistance action. The second camp was in Djibouti, in Africa. He was arrested in 1941 for his activities against the British. He was exiled to Africa by the British in 1944, and fought against the Arabs with the Lehi for the independence of the State. After the establishment of the State, he served in the Mossad for ten years. In 2001, he won the Israel Prize for his activities on behalf of Israel, the nation’s highest civilian honour, the Israel Prize awarded annually to outstanding citizens in several fields.

Shamir was Prime Minister of Israel twice, in 1983-84 and 1986-92. He presided as head of the nation over numerous important events in Israeli history, most notably the Gulf War, in which Israel was attacked by dozens of Iraqi Scud missiles. Shamir acceded to demands by the United States that Israel not respond to the Iraqi attacks, lest the coalition of Arab nations aligned against Saddam Hussein disband. Shamir also ordered the massive airlift of Ethiopian Jews in 1991, known as Operation Solomon. Shamir’s government collapsed after several parties left the coalition in the wake of Israel’s particiaption in the Madrid Talks.

Defeated in the 1992 election, he stepped down as head of the Likud party and watched from the sidelines as his successor, Yitzhak Rabin, negotiated interim land-for-peace agreements with the Palestinians. The agreements, including Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s recognition of Israel, did nothing to ease his suspicion. In a 1997 interview with the New York-based Jewish Post, he declared: “The Arabs will always dream to destroy us. I do not believe that they will recognize us as part of this region.” The Labor movement, in power for Israel’s first three decades, agreed to a 1947 U.N.-proposed partition plan to allow the creation of the Jewish state alongside a Palestinian entity. To Shamir and other Revisionists, that was tantamount to treason.

After Israel was founded in 1948, Shamir was in business for a few years before entering a career in Israel’s Mossad spy agency. In the mid-1960s he emerged to join the right-wing Herut party, which evolved into the present-day Likud. Shamir succeeded Menahem Begin as prime minister in 1983. His term was marked by the Arab Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the Holy Land, and the 1991 Gulf war, when Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel. During the Gulf war, Shamir went along with American demands not to retaliate for the Iraqi missile strikes. After the war, the United States stepped up pressure to start a Middle East process that could lead in only one direction a compromise with the Arabs.

Exasperated by Shamir’s stubborn refusal to go along with their plans for a regional settlement, then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker once went on television, recited the switchboard number of the White House and told Shamir to call when he got serious about peace. Despite his deep mistrust of Arab intentions, Shamir agreed to attend the 1991 Middle East peace conference in Madrid, sponsored by the United States and Russia. Shamir rejected the deals his successors made with the Arab Palestinians, in which Israel turned over control of some West Bank land to the Palestinians.

His pleasure at the 1996 election victory of Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu soured when Netanyahu continued to negotiate with the Palestinians and carry out land-for-security deals.Before the 1999 election, Shamir resigned from the Likud and joined a new right-wing block called National Union, headed by Begin’s son, Ze’ev Binyamin. The party, which rejected any turnover of land to the Palestinians, won only four seats in parliament, though it had seven members of the outgoing legislature on its list.

In a statement, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahi stated that Shamir was “a member of the generation of giants that established the State of Israel and fought for the freedom of the Jewish people in its land. As Prime Minister, Yitzchak Shamir acted to ensure the security of the State of Israel and its future, and was a sterling example of faithfulness to the future of the Jewish people.” Netanyahu, “expressed deep sadness over the death of Yitzchak Shamir.”

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A Jewish resident of Avigail in southern Mount Hevron, was driving home with a friend on the dark and largely deserted road, when he was distracted by a piece of black fabric waving in the wind and thought it was a dog running toward the road. He braked slightly and the next moment a huge ball of fire engulfed the front of his car. Had he not braked, he probably would have been at the center of the explosion when the bomb went off. The explosive device that had been planted at the side of the road was detonated with a cell phone. The Jewish man and his passenger managed to escape unharmed and continued driving. However, a second explosive charge, planted a few meters down the road which was planned to explode on them, was not detonated.

Collagen, is the material generated by the human body to help with healing wounds, repairing bones, regenerating nerves, fixing tendons and ligaments and dozens of other health and healing applications.

Collplant, currently the only company in the world generating collagen for use in the body from non-animal sources, is set to test its new Vergenix collagen application in two health clinics belonging to the Maccabee Health Fund.

The objective: To determine the effectiveness of Vergenix in repairing chronic wounds among diabetics, a major problem for those suffering from the disease.

Collagen production is usually very low among diabetics and other chronically ill individuals and many of them suffer from sores, wounds, and other skin problems that never seem to heal. Often, wounds can remain open for years, increasing discomfort and of course hiking the risk of infection.
Collplant believes that Vergenix will be able to help resolve this problem, supplying patients with enough human collagen to repair those wounds. If successful and prior studies and research by Collplant give every indication that it will be, the Maccabee study will help pave the way for approval of Vergenix and other tobacco-produced collagen treatments from Collplant by authorities in the U.S. and Europe. According to the company, the market for collagen products is in excess of $5 billion annually.

Collagen plays a major role in the body’s connective tissue, and is the most abundant protein in mammals, found in fibrous tissues such as tendons, ligaments and skin. It’s also abundant in cornea, cartilage, bone, blood vessels, the gut, and intervertebral discs, and is used in plastic surgery, wound and burn healing, tissue regeneration, orthopedics and even heart surgery.

Patients in the study will have a Vergenix-treated bandage applied to their wounds, which they will wear for about two weeks. After that, staff will examine the wounds, checking for progress and checking the body’s reaction to the treatment.

Most of the artificial human collagen in use today is produced from the remains of cows and pigs, always a risky venture, because you never know if germs or bacteria will come along “for the ride” in the collagen administered to patients.

After much experimentation, Collplant determined that tobacco plants were ideal for raising human collagen, which is genetically added to the plants. The collagen doesn’t interfere with the plant’s growth or development; and since it is not part of the seed or food chain, the likelihood of the collagen’s getting infected is extremely low.

According to Collplant CEO Yechiel Tal, “Vergenix is the first of the company’s products to be tested in clinical conditions in order to prove that it is safe and effective for treatment of wounds suffered by diabetes patients.

The information we learn in this study will help us with the regulatory process and will also help us acquire approval for other human collagen products produced through recombinant genetics. We are happy to be cooperating with Maccabee Health Services and are positive that the study will be a success.”

The new technology was developed by Professor Daniel Offen and Professor Eldad Melamed of TAU’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Felsenstein Medical Research Center.

Stem cells are extracted from a patient’s own bone marrow and differentiated into astrocyte-like cells. These cells are responsible for the well-being of the brain’s neurons. The cells release neurotrophic factors, or neuroprotectants, which have been shown to play a key role in reducing the progress of ALS, a debilitating disease characterized by the progressive degeneration of motor neurons that results in paralysis of a patient’s limbs and organ functions. Because the original cells are drawn from the patients themselves, stated Offen, the body should have no adverse reactions.

According to the researchers, it took 10 years to develop the technology which was licensed to BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics, a spinoff of TAU to develop it into a clinical-grade product. It is now called “NurOwn” and is being used in a clinical trial at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. The product will also be used in clinical trials at Massachusetts General Hospital in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Although the current study targets ALS, Professor Offen added that the cells have the potential to treat a broad range of neurodegenerative conditions, including Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases. The research appeared in the Journal of Stem Cells Reviews and Reports, and a number of other publications.