13th of May 2008 /

Hadassah speakers trace Israel’s high-tech revolution

By Deborah Moon

In just 60 years, Israel has evolved from an agricultural country whose major export was Jaffa oranges to a modern nation that exported in excess of $17.7 billion of high tech products in 2007.

Israel’s technology explosion has resulted in numerous advances in many fields of technology and medicine, Hadassah members were told during their Pacific Northwest Spring Conference held in Portland April 5-6.

“This is a side of Israel many people are not aware of, yet they are the beneficiaries of that side of Israel every day of their lives,” said Hadassah Regional President Diane Sigel.

Two Israelis were on hand to share those advances at the convention. Amir Yosefi, a manager with Intel Israel, lived in the United States with his family for six years, including in Portland in 1996-97. Portland native Phyllis Levinson, a past president of both Hadassah’s Pacific NW region and Hadassah-Israel, has lived in Israel for 14 years.

Yosefi said that as he prepared his presentation on Israel’s high-tech contributions, “I was amazed again and again. … In the last 25 years, Israel became a leader of high-tech industry.”

“Israel’s high-tech sales and exports more than tripled from 1996 to 2007,” said Yosefi. “It’s obvious this is going to be the number one industry in Israel.”

Yosefi shared some of  Israel’s numerous high-tech contributions including Pentium MMX, Pentium 4 and Centrino computer cores; Instant Messaging; and Voice over Internet Protocol (see chart above).

Yosefi predicted that the Intel plant he works for, Fab28, will by itself add 2 percent to Israel’s GDP by the end of 2009 thanks to its development of Qudro-core CPUs, which he said are at the forefront of the semiconductor industry.

Flashing a slide showing major companies with design centers in Israel (including Intel, Google, General Electric, MSN, IBM, Motorola, Microsoft Siemens, Johnson and Johnson), Yosefi said, “This big list of companies thought it was the right thing to do in Israel.”

Yosefi noted that when Warren Buffett bought part of Israel’s Iscar as his first investment outside of America, Buffett said, “Some Americans came looking for oil, so they didn’t stop in Israel. We came looking for brains, so we did stop in Israel.”

Israel’s surge in technology fields is the result of cultural, geopolitical and government realities, said Yosefi.

“We are workaholics—it is not good, but it’s fact—and we see success as the only option,” said Yosefi of Israelis, adding they also tend to think out of the box and know the importance of calculated risk taking.

Because Israel is small, it needs to develop products for a global market. With geopolitical realities, Israel cannot easily export to it’s nearest neighbors, so “we have to produce good ideas for the world.”

He added that the government’s active support of research and development is another key to Israeli prominence in the high tech sector. The government typically funds about 1,000 projects annually, he said.

When Levinson turned the meeting’s focus to Israel’s medical contributions, she urged people to visit the Web site Israel21c.com, which has ongoing updates on technology developments in all fields in Israel.

She cited medical developments such as a 3-D imaging process that aids orthopedic surgeons and a virtual reality program that helps doctors determine which part of a stroke patient’s brain has been damaged. A small heat-sensing device worn on the skin can help bed-wetters as young as 4.

Levinson said Hadassah is working hard on stem cell research to treat Parkinsons, Alzheimer’s and diabetes.

She told several stories of how individual patients were aided at Hadassah Hospital. An army lieutenant regained vision in one eye after a blood clot was dissolved; an Ethiopian immigrant had her sight restored; an Orthodox woman was able to become pregnant through in vitro fertilization after a DNA test at 3 days showed which embryos did not carry a genetic defect.

“Hadassah performs miracles,” she said.

Returning to Yosefi’s opening image, Levinson told the women that those who visit Israel “will see a country that is not orange groves, but a country of high tech. How diverse and wonderful we are.”