But the Ministry of Tourism has set its goals much, much higher, hoping to bring 5 million tourists in 2012. The Director of Tourism Shaul Tzemach is already nervous about a room shortage. As they say, that should be our worst problem! Anyone want to rent out their apartment for a few days? I volunteer. Tourists usually mean m-o-n-e-y. I say, bring it.

You know what this major increase in tourism will mean for Israel, don’t you? More hotels which means more construction! And Israelis just love construction and detours. There are 90 million shekels going towards encouraging tourism and millions more for the construction of more hotels in Jerusalem, the Sea of Galilee area, Acre, Ashdod, Kiryat Shmona and the Upper Galilee. That brings the total cost to 1 billion shekels. The number feels too big to comprehend and reminds me of Austin Powers’ Dr. Evil suggesting the largest amount he could fathom “1 milllliion dollars”.

While I admit that this is no flying car, the electric car will create cleaner air and lower our dependency on fossil fuels, a good thing considering the only oil Israel has is olive oil and it’s too tasty to be wasted on transportation.

Newsweek explains that 150 recharging stations aka ’swaps’ will be built around Israel and will take the same amount of time to fill up as a traditional gas pump. You’ll also be able to recharge at home or the office for shorter distances. Drivers can pay for the recharging with monthly subscriptions, similar to a cellphone plan, and it should end up being cheaper than gas.

When these guilt-free and cheaper fueling electric cars become available to the public, I will definitely want one. But I ain’t getting on the roads until the national aggression level in Israeli drivers is lowered significantly. Where is Project Better Drivers? That is the real question here.

Shai Agassi, of Project Better Place, is speaking at the President’s Conference in Jerusalem this week, so hopefully we’ll learn of the latest status of the project and report it here on israelplug.

Deng is an activist who fights to stop slavery, and has spoken on the topic around the world. More links on the topic are at the end of this article.

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Late last month, I went to hear Bishop Desmond Tutu speak at Boston’s Old South Church at a conference on “Israel Apartheid.” Tutu is a well respected man of God. He brought reconciliation between blacks and whites in South Africa. That he would lead a conference that damns the Jewish state is very disturbing to me.

The State of Israel is not an apartheid state. I know because I write this from Jerusalem where I have seen Arab mothers peacefully strolling with their families even though I also drove on Israeli roads protected by walls and fences from Arab bullets and stones. I know Arabs go to Israeli schools and get the best medical care in the world.

I know they vote and have elected representatives to the Israeli Parliament. I see street signs in Arabic, an official language here. None of this was true for blacks under Apartheid in Tutu’s South Africa. I also know countries that do deserve the apartheid label: My country, Sudan, is on the top of the list, but so are Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. What has happened to my people in Sudan is a thousand times worse than apartheid in South Africa. And no matter how the Palestinians suffer, they suffer nothing compared to my people. Nothing. And most of the suffering is the fault of their leaders.

Bishop Tutu, I see black Jews walking down the street here in Jerusalem. Black like us, free and proud.

Tutu said Israeli checkpoints are a nightmare. But checkpoints are there because Palestinians are sent into Israel to blow up and kill innocent women and children. Tutu wants checkpoints removed. Do you not have doors in your home, Bishop? Does that make your house an apartheid house? If someone, Heaven forbid, tried to enter with a bomb, we would want you to have security people “humiliating” your guests with searches, and we would not call you racist for doing so. We all go through checkpoints at every airport. Are the airlines being racist? No.

Yes, the Palestinians are inconvenienced at checkpoints. But why, Bishop Tutu, do you care more about that incovenience than about Jewish lives? Bishop, when you used to dance for Mandela’s freedom, we Africans all over Africa joined in. Our support was key in your freedom. But when children in Burundi and Kinshasa, all the way to Liberia and Sierra Leone, and in particular in Sudan, cried and called for rescue, you heard but chose to be silent.

Today, black children are enslaved in Sudan, the last place in the continent of Africa where humans are owned by other humans. I was part of the movement to stop slavery in Mauritania, which just now abolished the practice. But you were not with us, Bishop Tutu.

So where is Desmond Tutu when my people call out for freedom? Slaughter and genocide and slavery are lashing Africans right now. Where are you for Sudan, Bishop Tutu? You are busy attacking the Jewish state. Why?

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Related Links:

Simon Deng speaks to the International Humanist and Ethical Union about the victims of Jihad. One excerpt from that speech:

“Let me be very clear: this meeting is addressing the worst evil presently confronting the world. Jihad is on the march across the globe, and the people of the Sudan have experienced its cruelty more than any other group on earth. It is also fitting, if only in the most blackly comic way, that this conference coincides with the meeting of the 61st Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, a body whose purpose is to uphold the rights and dignity of all people, and yet it has among its members some of the most inhumane regimes on earth, among them the genocidal slave jihadists of Khartoum.”

iAbolish - American Anti-Slavery Group: a nonprofit organization that works with former victims of human trafficking to abolish modern-day slavery, focusing primarily on systems of chattel slavery in Sudan and Mauritania. Deng is part of their Speakers Bureau.

Simon Deng interviewed on Fox News

I first met Dr. Danny Brom, founder of the Israel Center for the Treatment of Psychotrauma of Herzog Hospital, following the murder of Nachshon Wachsman. After spending the five days with Nachshon’s parents, hoping, praying and suddenly experiencing the horror of Nachshon’s loss, I found, suddenly, that it was hard for me to breathe. I would count my breaths, hoping they wouldn’t stop, wondering if I was going to survive. I learned later it was called a panic attack. It was part of post traumatic stress disorder.

Just being in the same room with Dr. Brom makes you feel better. There is something soothing about the way his long body drapes into a chair, something in the gentleness of his tone that is a balm to a troubled spirit. He gave me back my breath. I have had it ever since. I was not part of any statistic.

Neither was Ronit M., who was a young bride when she experienced the Passover Massacre in 2002 at the Park Hotel in Netanya. While neither she nor her new husband or his family suffered physical injuries, Ronit lost her period for an entire year after the terrorist attack, a year in which her dearest hope was to have her first child. She had sleep disorders, and panic attacks. She couldn’t cope with going to a hotel or a restaurant, or even to be in a private home during a seder. In the end, she and her family realized that she needed help. She too found her way to the Israel Center for the Treatment of Psychotrauma. Today, Ronit is not only the mother of three, she has her joy of life back.

The Center does more than care for victims. It trains thousands of therapists, and develops nationwide programs for helping traumatized kids. Every month, they struggle to keep doing this vital work, the major part of their budget coming from private donations.

If you really want to help Israelis in the most direct way possible, I can think of no organization that does more, or will use your donation better. For more information on the organization, and to send your donation, please visit their website at: www.traumaweb.org.

Anyways, there are those who claim that the media repeatedly adopts a negative slant when reporting on Israel, thus promoting a bias rather than reality, and that we’re not necessarily worse than other countries. For example, The Netherlands is a particularly sinister place.

The Netherlands?! The Netherlands is a place full of windmills, tulips and free pot! A bad day there must be when someone smoking pot fears that the windmills are blowing the tulips over.

Well, The Netherlands ain’t as rosy as it seems, and Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has set out to prove it with his new blog “Bad News From the Netherlands.” In this blog, he exclusively reports on the negative things happening in The Netherlands, to emulate the negative slant that the media applies to Israel. For example, he tells us that this beacon of democracy has adopted preventive arrests! This means that if they think someone plans to disturb the public order, they can arrest them. The site has other stories about suspicously-dead key witnesses in trials, and how 60% of Dutch mayors are threatened annually.

Dr. Gerstenfeld encourages others to start similar blogs about other countries, and someone has already taken the torch and is writing about the cause of all the world’s problems…Finland! (Oooh, just the name sends shivers down my spine.)

How about Bad News from Canada?

As a former Canadian, I decided to browse today’s Canadian papers to find some dirty, juicy news that could potentially work for a “Bad News about Canada” blog. I knew this was a useless attempt as soon as I saw the first screaming headline on The Toronto Star:

“Panel to probe city’s books”

Oh my lord! Anything but a panel! And they’re probing books! Do the gatekeepers of Toronto never sleep?

And then, the top headline under the crime section (parents, please shield your children’s innocent eyes):

“Students’ totem pole stolen”

What has this world come to? Totem-pole-stealing good-for-nothings…why don’t they pick on totem-poles-student-ownsers their own size?

Dr. Gerstenfeld - your plan is interesting, but there are certain countries that actually have to struggle to come up with negative stories for their media. Their news can never compare to ours - for better or for worse.

On a social level, Roi Carthy writes that Shvoong Homework lets kids “use Shvoong Homework to type-up their schoolwork, keep it organized, and then share it with individual or groups of classmates, the entire class, students from other schools entirely, or no one at all. ” Does education need to be another social networking site? What happened to the days of paying attention in class, writing things down in a notebook, and doing well all on your own.

Deadline: January 22, 2008, Tu B’shvat
Email ideas to: info@derech-eretz.org
Send to: Rehov Achuza 96, POBox 26, Ranaana
Fax to: 09-7409592
Winners will be announced: June 6, 2008

(Hat tip: The New Jew: Blogging Jewish Philanthropy)

The prize reminds me of meetings I’ve attended where I’m eager to suggest a good idea only to avoid saying anything so I don’t have to take on extra responsibility since I know how it works - whoever suggests it, does it. Maybe there could be a second prize like 1000 bucks, a mention of your name on the Brandeis campus, and explain your idea in further detail over the phone. I’d submit 20 ideas right now.

Taglit-birthright

Taglit allows other organizations to run their own trips in conjunction with Taglit. Generally, these groups are serious Jewish organizations with conventional agendas, like strengthening Jewish identity and community.

Well, now you can join Jewlicious and Heeb, two extraordinarily unconventional Jewish publications, on their Taglit-birthright trip to Israel. birthright will never be the same.

Here’s how Jewlicious describes their trip:

None of our trip leaders have been hired because of their experience singing Kumbaya in a circle at some summer camp…Jewlicious and Oranim will provide you with the Israel insider perspective, while Heeb represents the very best of Shtetl fabulousness transplanted onto the Lower East side. It’s the next best thing to being on a trip led by Herzl and Spinoza. Or Ariel Sharon and Woody Allen. Except that Soon Yi doesn’t qualify.

Shtetl fabulousness transplanted onto the Lower East side!! After reading that, how can you NOT join their group?

For more info, see the Jewlicious Trip FAQs.

To learn more about Taglit-birthright, visit their site, or see their YouTube channel.

And finally, here’s the pre-birthright version of Jewish History:

[Hat tip to Israpundit]