Transcripts For WHUT Worldfocus 20100316 : vimarsana.com

tonight, on worldfocus tonight, a special edition of worldfocus. 21st century israel. the jewish state undergoes sweeping changes as immigrants from around the world pour in. investment in high tech and a new generation of engineers and scientists serve economic growth in a country short of natural resources. we will introduce you to an israeli company determined to power electric cars around the globe. and a look inside israel s film industry. filmmakers there are hardly following the hollywood script. from the different perspectives of reporters and analysts from around the globe, this is worldfocus. major support has been provided by rosalind p. walter and the peter g. peterson foundation, dedicated to promoting fiscal responsibility and addressing key economic challenges facing america s future. and additional funding is provided by the following supporters good evening. welcome. i m daljit dhaliwal in new york. during our final weeks on td the air, we will be rebroadcasting some of our favorite stories that shed light on different nations, people and global trends. tonight we focus on the changing face of israel. as always, a political news from that country of only 7 million people is front and center. the story generating headlines this week is the growing dispute between the united states and israel of prime minister netanyahu s government to build[ new jewish settlements in outer in arab east jerusalem. as important as that story is, our focus tonight isn t the politics but the changing face of what is commonly known as the jewish state. in fact, that name itself may be outdated. because now more than ever, israel has become a multicultural nation. worldfocus special correspondent michael greenspan focused on that in a report that he filed last year. reporter: this has always been a nation on the move shaped by waves of immigrants from around the world. religious believers, socialist dreamers and holocaust survivors, refugees from muslim lands and a fair number of newcomers from north and south america and even as far off as australia. they turned their biblical promised land into modern israel. it s called the jewish state. but when you take into account the variety of cultural, national and ethnic backgrounds from which these people come and the fact that many of them aren t even jewish, it quickly becomes clear that describing the character of israel is no simple matter. start with the fact that some 20% of israelis are muslims, christians and other minorities. take into account the recent arrival of more 0+87abeájjr new immigrants from the former soviet union and almost the entire jewish population of ethiopia. it s enough to make a social scientist s head spin, even one like israel s leading demographer who came here from italy. it s never a dull moment. so on one hand you have in fact a highly functional israeli society. on the other hand, there are certain unsolved problems mostly at the kind of ideological ideal point of view. what is israel? what is the nature of the face of israel? reporter: it may take several generations to answer those questions. meanwhile, each wave of newcomers faces its own challenges. those who came from the villages of rural ethiopia find the transition to modern life especially difficult. reflected in about 50% unemployment and frequent domestic problems. while their children learn to fit in, many of the parents are left behind. on the other hand, beginning in the late 1980s, immigrants from the former soviet union arrived in israel in such great numbers with so much purchasing power that they were able to carve out their own niche. in their neighborhoods russian signs and tastes abound. translator: all the products in the store come from ukraine and russia. the people who come in here see goods they are familiar with. that s what they want to buy. reporter: that includes nonkosher products like pork and seafood that russians love and many israelis forgo for religious reasons. that s just one aspect of the culture class. we try to behave ourselves. this woman came from russia as a high school student. now she s doing graduateork in marine biology. for her, the transition to israeli life has gone smoothly. less so for her parents. while they found nice lodging in the seaside town of ashdod, they found it impossible to pick up the pieces of their lives. in russia, her father was a successful civil engineer. in israel, he could only find factory work. her mother was a russian language teacher. in israel she ended up working in a commercial laundry and learning one of the most important words in hebrew. you need to have patience. that s a word i ve learned quite well. whatever moving to israel took away from them, it gave them something they couldn t find in russia, the ability to openly revel in being jewish with no fear of anti-semitism. in return, russian mass immigration has provided israel with a source of new energy. the huge influx of highly qualified human capital, a resource of exceptionally high value that helped israel undertaking what i would call the big leap forward in its economy and infrastructure, which happened basically during the 1990s. reporter: something else happened in the 1990s. growing unrest prevented palestinians who once provided a source of cheap labor from continuing to work in israel. in their place non-jews began arriving often illegally from other parts of the world. many of them inhabit this rundown neighborhood in south tel aviv. you have chinese. you have nepalese, filipinos, burma. reporter: his mini market offers them an impressive selection of eastern delicacies. we accept them of course. we re trying to help them. reporter: recently many new arrivals have been refugees from africa, many of them fleeing the bloodshed in darfur. i m from an islamic country and we are facing genocide from our own muslims. reporter: like the israelites of old, you see other refugees trek across the desert from egypt risking their lives to make it into isrvfááxv most are arrested upon arrival spending months in jail. yasim established an organization to lobby for their rights. the shelter where they spend the first days of freedom. he says israeli citizens, not the government, have rallied to his cause. i read about this history when i was in high school, about genocide about the holocaust. they feel these things inside them. reporter: if there is a real melting pot in israel, this is it. being in the army is light years away from what many immigrants to israel would be doing back home. yet, ironically, here it s something most of them want to do. translator: it turns me into an israeli. when i put on a uniform, i become part of the state of israel. reporter: leaving one country to settle in another is something most of us will never experience. it will take years to understand how the arrival of so many newcomers affects the character of israeli society. but it s already clear that this nation of immigrants, much like america, has a knack for making all sorts of people feel at home. this is michael greenspan, reporting for worldfocus in israel. one other note about israel and its population that might surprise you more than 20% of israel s citizens are arabs. that s morthan 1.5 million people. most arab citizens of israel are muslim. the vast majority of them sunnis. there s also a significant arab-christian minority from various denominations as well as arab druze. there s another part of israeli life that you might not know about. it s high-tech industry. it s become the backbone of israel s economy. and the impact is being seen far beyond israel. it s quite possible, for example, that the high speed broadband connection in your home was made possible in part by an israeli company. worldfocus special correspondent martin himel takes a look at what has become the silicon valley of the middle east. reporter: david baum is the co-founder of coppergate. his inspiration came from his father who arrived in israel from the nazi death camps. what he did all his life is building the country, and i see that the new high tech in israel, the high-tech industry is a direct continues to what it is. it is the new way of building israel and making it stronger and more successful. reporter: coppergate has succeeded in breaking what is known among engineers as the last copper mile. the copper barrier or phone and electricity wires in your homes which are too small to carry tv and heavy data signals. but coppergate s hpna chips have broken that barrier cutting expensive cable costs for mes. what we re doing is passing a huge amount of data, a huge amount of information over a simple two-wire telephone line. reporter: at&t, cisco and motorola are employing the system on tv and data networks in over a million homes throughout the u.s. that number is growing exponentially every month. coppergate is one of the many high-tech sagas here. american corporate giants like microsoft, intel and motorola have invested billions of dollars into r&d centers in israel to capitalize on the creativity of many thousands of israeli engineers and scientists.÷ar in 2007, 46% of israel s $34 billion in industrial exports came from high tech. there s no question that it is the single biggest factor in driving the economy in israel and actually the single biggest factor in actually keeping israel strong. reporter: and it s not just a matter of economics. it s also a matter of lifestyle. a major high-tech company spent a minor fortune to hold a private concert for its employees with a prominent israeli band. high-tech employees feel they have it made. many are young, earning american-level salaries, working hard, but also living better materially than the former generations. there are now thousands of start-ups and mature high-tech companies here and many have established labs and plants in small isolated towns like yoqneam in northern israel. it s offered these towns unprecedented opportunities. given imaging is the big success story here. a microcamera scans organs in the body. this capsule, for example, is expected to earn given imaging close to $140 million in revenue this year. the capsule floats through a patient s small bowel searching for disease and tumors. no other instrument can reach this organ within the body. what is revolutionary about your product? you take this small little pill. you swallow it. and it s just taking pictures. and it s taking them the small bowel about 50,000 pictures all along the journey, so it s noninvasive, very easy. reporter: given imaging is now focusing on the colon. its colon 2 system is in the testing stage for fda approval. 50,000 americans die annually from colon cancer. if detected early, the cure rate can be as high as 90%. the high-tech industry is the major employer in this town of 20,000. the world has taken a big hit because of the recession. how has israel s high-tech industry fared this big storm? it s staggering the number of new companies in high tech that were formed in november and december of 2008 went up dramatically. this was obviously because people who lost their jobs obviously thought this is an absolutely wonderful time to start their own business. reporter: despite the recession, given imaging is ing its workforce. if it were not for this industry, nati shaul would probably have left his hometown. nati came to work on the capsule production line seven years ago. now he s the capsule production line manager. israel has few natural resources like oil or minerals. so companies here have invested into human capital into a new generation of engineers and technicians like this man. translator: i m hoping for many interesting challenges in the future. high tech has really given us great opportunities.(ñkrtiá reporter: it s an infectious optimism that has led to the quick expansion of many small israeli towns and limited the detrimental effects of the worldwide recession on israel. for worldfocus, this is martin himel in yoqneam. among other things given imaging hopes its colon 2 capsule that you just saw will be a substitute for conventional colonoscopies. we turn to another story about innovation, one that sprang from a plan to end israel s dependence on foreign oil. it s about electric cars and the challenge of enabling them to travel far enough to make them practical. a company called better place is promoting electric cars by designing an entire system to service them, and many other countries are expressing interest, as we hear from worldfocus special correspondent michael greenspan. the best car in the world. the best car for reporter: by now, the idea of an electric car is not nearly as miraculous as it once was. so when you look at this israeli electric car, you might think what s the big deal. well, it turns out the big deal isn t the car but a system this man has created to keep it and hundreds of thousands of our other electric cars running all at the same time and also going greater distances. we re effectively a new kind of mobility company. the first generation of mobility companies were cell phone companies. they sold you minutes on a device you talked on. we sell you miles on a device you drive in. reporter: electric cars today like this test model can travel just over 100 miles on a full charge. that s why the hybrids you see on the road rely on both ann]u& electrical charge and from gasoline. but the new car from better place, with its unique recharging system, is meant to extend that range. the main goal is to give the user a feeling that he can drive anywhere, anyplace, with no limitations. so he doesn t feel it s an electric car. reporter: drivers will find a few differences like this combination gps and computer, which will be fitted into the car s dashboard. before beginning the day on a full charge, you punch in your intended destinations. while you re on your way, the system transmits the data to a service center, which calculates your energy requirements. after you pull in to park, you then plug in to charge up. one end of the car. the other end into one of these charge spots. within two years, the people at better place say they re going to have several hundred thousands of these installed throughout israel on a test basis. and it s here they say that the real revolution begins. based on how long you plan to remain parked and how many other cars are charging their batteries at the same time, the system works out a plan to keep your battery sufficiently charged without overloading the electric grid. it will even update you on the charge status via text messages. most charging will occur at night when people are parked at home and electricity is plentiful. if that s the case, asks bruce upend a writer on energy at forbes magazine, who needs better place s costly infrastructure? if people can recharge at home you might not need a better place because most people don t go more than 20 miles in a given day. they don t need a vast network of charging stations. reporter: but what happens when you want to take a trip beyond battery range and don t have time to recharge? better place says its technology will tell you where to stop along the way in or out of town to have a robot replace your battery with a fresh one in about the same time it now takes to fill up at the pump. the batteries are free and recyclable. like at the charge points, you only pay for the electricity you use. after testing this concept in israel, better place plans to do the same in denmark and australia. it has already signed deals with those national governments, with the province of ontario, with the state of hawaii and with municipalities in the bay area of california. and better place boldly claims that if the u.s. government were to fund the project and if u.s. car manufacturers produced enough electric cars, an electric car system could be up and running across the united states by 2012. being successful also means that you understand what s coming. reporter: shipping magnate and business tycoon idan ofer is convinced better place will succeed. so convinced, in fact, that though his israel corporation owns the country s largest oil refinery, it sunk $130 million of seed money into better place, an investment he says in the future. we re reducing our dependency on oil and we re reducing co2 emissions. this is a great thing. reporter: sounds good. but the doubters ask if that s really the case. at least in the u.s., certain parts of the country are very coal-intensive like the northeast and the mid-atlantic states. and if you convert the entire fleet to electric-powered cars charging off the grid off of coal, you re actually going to end up with a worse environment than you would otherwise. reporter: the better place l# people dispute that. and they cite another reason for going electric. less dependence on oil, much of it arab oil. not only for israel. look at the u.s. economy. we re dependent on oil as a globe. when you see the price of oil going up and down to such extreme, you really understand the dependency on oil not only from as an energy source but also from a geopolitical and also economic perspective needs to find a solution. our job in better place is to make our solution usable and affordable. reporter: and to convince both policy and carmakers that instead of bailing out today s failing automotive industry, they should be investing in tomorrow s. the people at better place believe they re the ones who know how to go the next step, to build the system and infrastructure to make electric cars attractive and practical for drivers. this is michael greenspan reporting for worldfocus in israel. a couple of other notes on better place. in case you were wondering, the company says it plans to generate the electricity it needs for its recharging stations from renewable energy sources, solar panels and wind farms. finally tonight, a look at israeli culture. in particular, its robust film industry. filmmaking in israel is funded primarily by state grants, even though the themes can be highly critical of the government and at odds with conventional israeli values. in israel, politics and culture often intersect. and as martin himel discovered there is no shortage of real-life material to stimulate the filmmakers. reporter: joseph cedar is one of israel s hottest directors and writers. an observant jew, a former paratrooper, he knows the bitter taste of war and conflict. but cedar has transformed that taste into bittersweet films like beaufort which was nominated for an academy award. beaufort was an israeli military fortification in southern lebanon. in the film, israeli infantry are ordered to hold the bunker while under constant missile barrages from the lebanese hezbollah militia. these fighters are awaiting towards withdraw from lebanon. the casualties seem pointless. you say your movies are about mo mounting retreats and dealing with it. how is that so? the biggest issues that israelis are dealing with is retreat. what does that retreat mean? what are we retreating from? we re not only retreating geographically. we re retreating from a system of values that enables us to move away from physical geographical power to cultural, moral, ethnic power.-8e reporter: retreat is a controversial strategy that is still hotly debated. israeli troops withdrew from lebanon in 2000. five years later israel unilaterally retreated from the gaza strip forcibly uprooting thousands of jewish settlers. it was very traumatic and became a passionate topic for israeli filmmakers. they argue will such withdrawals lead to peace or war. is it moral or improper to occupy in order to protect one s country? hollywood is something you go to in order to escape from something. or have fun to be in a fantasy world. but when you go to watch an israeli movie, you come to think. you come to really see life. reporter: unlike european or american audiences, the majority reality of warfare. many of them have served in combat units. that is why cedar s films are so popular. terminators, no james bond-like characters. in beaufort, with few precious moments to rest in the bunkers, the soldiers let down their guard. emotion and weakness overwhelm them. :i6srl mark rosenbaum is considered one of israel s top film producers. his films explore a range of controversial israeli issues. in seven minutes to heaven, galia can t escape her past. she narrowly survived a suicide bow a was the paramedic who had saved her life. now he tries to free her from the memories of her past. i see an american movie, first of all, will see less of the suffering because it doesn t you don t want to see the film very much. on the other hand, we like it this way because we believe that this way people can identify with that with her suffering. reporter: war versus retreat and compromise.y. a victim fighting trauma, trying to embrace life and love. all rich topics. all hotly debated and vigorously explored in israeli cinema. for worldfocus, this is martin himel in tel aviv. and that is worldfocus for this tuesday evening. tomorrow and thursday we will offer you a series of signature pieces from the arab world. for more news and analysis don t forget to go to our website. that s worldfocus.org. i m daljit dhaliwal in new york. thank you so much for joining us. we hope to see you back here at the same time tomorrow. until then, good night. captions by vitac www.vitac.com major support for worldfocus has been provided by rosalind p. walter and the peter g. peterson foundation, dedicated to promoting fiscal responsibility and addressing key economic challenges facing america s future. an funding is provided by the following supporters