Other items in today’s column include:
* Terrorist who injured San Diegan and 11 other IDF soldiers told his intentions
*Political bytes
*Mazal tov! Mazal tov!
*Coming our way
*Recommended reading
* In Memoriam
SAN DIEGO – Before long the historic port city of Akko, Israel, will become headquarters for a search for sunken treasures of the academic kind in a project that brings together scientists from UC San Diego and the University of Haifa.
“Along the coast of Israel, submerged settlements, ancient harbors and sunken ships tell a unique story of 11,000 years of human resilience and adaptation,” explains Assaf Yasur-Landau, director of the Leon Racanati Institute for Maritime Studies at the University of Haifa. “I am very excited for this tremendous opportunity in which both partners – the University of Haifa and UC San Diego – join forces to create pathbreaking underwater and coastal research as well as a joint training program on the Carmel Coast.”
The collaboration is being supported by a three-year grant of $1.3 million from the Koret Foundation, which has a policy of encouraging joint efforts that bring together Israeli and American scientists.
Thomas Levy, an anthropology professor at UC San Diego who also serves as a co-director of the Scripps Center or Marine Archaeology (SCMA) commented: “The world’s oceans and seas are the last great frontier of archaeological exploration, and the Mediterranean Sea holds the oldest and most densely traversed maritime network in the world. This new California-Israel collaboration will provide students and faculty from both the U.S. and Israel with unique opportunities for original research concerning climate, environmental and culture change.”
John Hildebrand, an oceanography professor at Scripps and SCMA’s co-director, added: “The Koret Foundation’s gift enables SCMA to marshal the excellence in marine and environmental science at Scripps Institution of Oceanography with more than 50 years of underwater archaeology expertise from Leon Racanati Institute for Maritime Studies. We see this as a unique opportunity to build up SCMA’s international presence, as well as to bring the tool-kit we develop home to San Diego and apply it off the beach here in La Jolla.”
Anita Friedman, president of the Koret Foundation, described UC San Diego and the Leon Racanati Institute as “world-class academic institutions,” and added “This partnership will further strengthen the bonds between the U.S. and Israel, reinforcing the close ties between our two countries to respond to some of today’s most pressing environmental issues.”
Thee award “will facilitate scientific exploration of coastal environments in Israel, which offer the most sensitive deep-time records for how humans have adapted to climate and environmental change over the past 11,000 years,” according to a news release from UC San Diego. “The relatively new field of marine archaeology offers new ways for investigating these issues through the ages.”
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Terrorist who injured San Diegan and 11 other IDF soldiers told his intentions
Before Sanad Al-Turman rammed his car on Feb. 6 into 12 Israel Defense Force soldiers, including Ori Hamo from San Diego, who was hospitalized with injuries, he posted a video on Facebook in which he recites a poem extolling such an attack, according to Palestinian Media Watch. https://palwatch.org/page/17407
The terrorist’s poem read:
Stand proud and tall like the minarets.
Send your bullets like the ‘stones of hard clay’ [Quran, Sura 105:4].
Tear the gangs of invaders into pieces, and let them taste instant death, by [angel] Gabriel.
Burn the tyrants’ corpses and their filth, and pour gasoline on their organs.
Let them burn all the palm trees in our courtyards – we will rise like palm trees above the palm trees.
If they destroy all of the minarets above us – we [will be] like the minarets, then you will hear the call: Praise Allah.”
Palestinian Media Watch on Monday, Feb. 17, called out Facebook, saying: “This is another example of Facebook’s double standards. Since it is Facebook’s policy to allow Fatah’s terror promotion on Facebook as PMW has documented, the terrorist’s video promoting violence is still up and viewable on Fatah’s Facebook page.”
Hamo, who went to Israel as a Lone Soldier, is known in San Diego as Ori Hamond, 18. He is an alumnus of San Diego Jewish Academy, where his mother Hagit Cohen-Hamo teaches Hebrew. Isaac Herzog, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, coincidentally had scheduled a visit to San Diego Jewish Academy shortly after the ramming attack, and was able to comfort Cohen-Hago before she flew to Israel to be by her son’s bedside At the time of the early morning attack, the 12 soldiers were walking toward the Kotel for their official induction ceremony.
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Political bytes
*Cory Briggs, a candidate for San Diego city attorney, in an appeal for phone bank workers, says “The Establishment is pouring money and people into the incumbent’s [City Attorney Mara Elliott] campaign, despite all the problems that the press has been reporting about her. They’’re doing this because they know that we can beat The Establishment.”
*Howard Dyckman, president of the San Diego chapter of the Zionist Organization of America, is urging U.S. Jews over the age of 18 to vote for the ZOA Coalition in the e-mail ballot election to select delegates to the World Zionist Congress next October. According to Dyckman, a vote for the ZOA Coalition’s slate will “Say No” to BDS, Anti-Semitism, and an Iranian Terror State, and “Say Yes” to protecting endangered Jews, and the Jewish People’s right to its homeland.
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Mazal tov! Mazal tov!
Judy Friedel is a longtime committee member of the San Diego International Jewish Film Festival and its former chair. She and her husband, Dr. Bill Friedel, sponsored Sunday night’s showing of Spider in the Web by Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis. It is a nearly two-hour film in which Ben Kingsley plays an aging Mossad agent, who is under suspicion for having been less than truthful about the intelligence he has fed to the Israeli spy agency about Syria’s chemical weapons program. In the film, a young agent (Itay Tiran) is sent to Belgium to watch over him, perhaps even liquidate him, if he is found to have purposely fed false intelligence that endangered the Israeli military. But the young agent learns that his late father was a close friend of the veteran agent. A few hours before the film was shown, the Friedels gathered 20 friends mostly drawn from among the members and spouses of the Tifereth Israel Synagogue Men’s Club for a vegetarian dinner at Sipz restaurant on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard.
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Coming our way
The San Diego Outreach Synagogue will serve dinner to unsheltered families from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m., Tuesday, March 24, in the parking lot of Jewish Family Service at 8804 Balboa Avenue, San Diego. According to an announcement from Dan Weiss and Albert Schafer, “We will provide a meal for 60 situationally homeless people who are living in their vehicles and staying overnight in the JFS Parking Lot. You may cook or buy your food contributions.”
A Yiddish-themed Shabbat at UC San Diego Hillel will be conducted at 6 p.m., Friday, April 3, st 8976 Cliffridge Avenue, La Jolla. RSVP via this email.
Recommended reading
*New York Times reporter David Halbfinger tells in Monday’s San Diego Union-Tribune of the high tech and cyber-warfare between Israel and Gaza.
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In Memoriam
*Jack Ladinsky, 87, died February 13, Am Israel Mortuary reported. Graveside services were held on Sunday, Feb. 16 at El Camino Memorial Park, officiated by Rabbi Alexis Pearce, staff chaplain of UC San Diego Health.
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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com. Obituaries in San Diego Jewish World are sponsored by Inland Industries Group LP in memory of long-time San Diego Jewish community leader Marie (Mrs. Gabriel) Berg.