A video circulating on the internet exposed former Arab Member of Knesset Azmi Bishara denying the existence of a “Palestinian” nation. The video was recorded years prior to Bishara entering Israel’s parliament in 1996 as head of the Arab Balad party. Bishara, who resigned from the Knesset and fled the country in 2007 when Israeli Security Services were ready to arrest him on charges of treason and espionage, is shown in the video reiterating his Arab nationalist position that there is no such thing as a “Palestinian” people.

Translation: “Well, I don’t think there is a Palestinian nation at all. I think there is an Arab nation. I always thought so and I did not change my mind. I do not think there is a Palestinian nation, I think its a colonialist invention - Palestinian nation. When were there any Palestinians? Where did it come from? I think there is an Arab nation. I never turned to be a Palestinian nationalist, despite of my decisive struggle against the occupation. I think that until the end of the 19th century, Palestine was the south of Greater Syria.”

People should investigate the basic claims of the Middle East conflict before expressing strong opinions. “History did not start in 1967. The modern day Hebrews, have over a 4,000 year old history and an uninterrupted presence in their homeland for over 3,300 years. The Palestinian nation was invented in the 1960s by Yassir Arafat and Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu in an attempt to erase Jewish history and steal the Jewish Holy Land. The term ‘Palestine’ was initially a foreign colonialist concept invented by the Romans who massacred, exiled and enslaved the Jewish people. It is not an authentic Arab identity.

If you could spend $208 on a small device that fitted to your car engine, saving you up to 40 percent on your gas consumption, the earth from pollution, and which also gave your car more power, you’d think it was too good to be true, right? Well this is exactly the promise of a new invention, the Z5, devised by an Israeli teenager Zion Badash when he was only 16.

After two years in the works, Badash started selling his device a few months ago, with road tests to prove it. Car manufacturers around the world are lining up for stakes in this wunderkind’s new device. Badash came up with the idea while he was walking down a smoggy street in Tel Aviv one day, and noticed all the pollution belching out of the cars. “That bothered me,” he tells ISRAEL21c. He hadn’t even started studying for his driving license at that time, and had no idea about the cost of fuel. It was the environmental cost of pollution that put his gears in motion.

Less fuel, more power, slashes emissions; Badash, now 18 had no idea what was the cost of gas or the fuel consumption for regular cars, but realized if [the solution] comes before the combustion itself, the effect will not only be on emissions — it will also affect emissions, save fuel and make the more car powerful. Of course, more energy savings is “a big and important effect, but it “wasn’t his main concern.”

Though Badash learned physics at high school and is already doing math at university courses, the knowledge he needed to come up with the special metal alloys in his device didn’t come from either of these places. He realized that there has to be something with all the technologies around us that isn’t done, that could be. The device he developed changes for a fraction of a second the way air behaves when going into the combustion chamber. This change allows the engine to use air more efficiently, saving fuel and giving more thrust at the same time.

After developing the prototype of the Z5, Badash went on to found a three-man company. It’s a family business run by Badash’s brother-in-law Eli Mor, with headquarters in Tel Aviv and a manufacturing and distribution outlet in Turkey. The Z5 is now available through mail order via the company website, and already thousands of units have been sold so far. All of the world’s large car manufacturers have been in contact with Mor. They are looking for ways it can be fitted directly into their vehicles. “Ford, Mazda, all the large companies have been in contact with us, and we are in talks with them,” stated Mor, who sees the environment as the main priority for the business: “This is the top of the work. We don’t look at fluctuating gas prices.”

What the alloy is made from is a secret, of course, and Badash admits he isn’t quite sure how it works, but road tests on emissions show that it certainly does work. It can be fitted to new cars, or old ones, diesel, hybrid, buses — basically any combustion engine, even power plants - says Badash, who is about to be recruited to the army. “Using it in an open combustion chamber brings a maximum effect. You can see fuel consumption [go down] very clearly,” he says. “It can be used everywhere. I am not exaggerating,” says the teen convincingly, pointing to the company’s website and recent emissions monitoring done by the authorities in Israel.

Fitted onto the air filter that goes to the combustion chambers, the Z5 is as easy to use as changing a tire. And for $208, this teen may be onto something that could revolutionize the auto industry. His brother-in-law seems to think so. He thinks Badash should win a Nobel Prize for the Z5.

An Israeli researcher is closing in on a vaccine to prevent the development of Alzheimer’s disease, one of the most devastating forms of dementia.
Dr. Alon Monsonego, a researcher in the Shraga Segal Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Be’er Sheva and in the National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev, innoculated mice with human genes carrying Alzheimer’s disease.

He and his colleagues found that the mice “were able to reduce plaques of beta-peptides, as well as inflammations and neuronal damage associated with the disease.”

The study, conducted together with British and U.S. researchers, was aimed at creating a vaccine that would strengthen the immune system to prevent subsequent development of Alzheimer’s in people with a genetic predisposition to the disease.

Funded in part by the Israel Science Foundation, the Alzheimer’s Association, New York real estate developer Leonard Litwin, and the Aaron Gural family, the findings of the study were published in the September issue of the Journal of Immunology.

Monsonego determined through using the mouse model that introducing A-beta (amyloid-beta) into the brain triggers a natural immune response which can be detected in humans. “Stimulating an immune response to A-beta in these humanized mice not only resulted in a highly efficient clearance of A-beta (plaque) from the brain, but also in a markedly reduced inflammatory reaction,” he said. The team was also able to predict that the characteristics of the immune response in mice were the same as in the human subjects, he added.

The study is particularly important because it forms the basis for developing an individualized treatment approach to the disease, Monsonego pointed out, “since different populations will respond differently to a vaccine based on their genetic background.” He added that more research will be needed to ensure the safety and efficacy of the model before the vaccine can be marketed.

Alzheimer’s disease is expected to affect approximately 36 million adults in 2010, according to a report released Monday by Alzheimer’s Disease International, an umbrella organization covering Alzheimer’s groups around the world. The statistic is literally one-third higher than it was in 2005. In 2003, approximately 8 million adults were estimated to be living with Alzheimer’s disease.

The organization added that it is predicting the incidence of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia will continue to skyrocket over the next few decades.

Israeli Company Receives Patent on Alzheimer’s Vaccine
This is not the first attempt at developing a vaccine against Alzheimer’s disease. In November 2003, the Israeli Mindset Bio-Pharmaceuticals company received a patent for the first vaccine against Alzheimer’s disease, one year after the Elan Corporation had developed a vaccine, only to find that adverse side effects would make the model impractical.

Mindset announced that it was working on strategies to address the safety issues found during trials of previous attempts by Elan and Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories in their previous trials. Mindset CEO Daniel Chain said the post-trial analysis of the data from the Elan clinical trials had showed that it had been effective, and said his company would continue to work towards developing a safer model.

The Elan Corporation did not abandon its own efforts, however. In July 2009, the New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson mega-biotech company picked up an 18 percent stake in the Irish biotech firm’s efforts to develop its Alzheimer’s vaccine, as well as a treatment for the disease. J&J is now set to invest nearly $1.4 billion through its Centocor division in a collaboration with Elan in the effort.