Jewry's Role in
Human Advancement
Israeli Women
In Combat Units
Jerusalem/JTA — Israel is reportedly
planning to increase the number of
female soldiers who will serve in combat
units.
The military is creating brochures
that will be sent to young women about
to be called up for service, suggesting
that they volunteer for combat units,
according to the Israeli daily Hdaretz.
Most of the new recruits will be sent
to positions along the "seam line" sepa-
rating Israel from the West Bank,
Hdaretz reported. Most women current-
ly serving in combat units are serving in
infantry units along Israel's borders with
Egypt and Jordan.
Soccer Team
Attack Foiled
Jerusalem/JTA — An Al Qaida attack
against Israel's national soccer team in
Malta last October reportedly was foiled
at the last minute.
The planned attack on a European
championship qualifier game in Malta
was thwarted with the arrest, a day
before the match, of a Tunisian man
suspected of Al Qaida links, the Israeli
daily Yediot Achronot reported. The
paper cited Rome security officials as
saying four other Tunisians suspected of
belonging to the cell were detained in
Italy.
Publication Eyes
Campus Racism
New York/JTA — The American Jewish
Committee issued a publication that
takes aim at the growing pattern of anti-
Semitism on some U.S. college campus-
es.
•
The campus activity is often camou-
flaged as criticism of Israel, according to
the publication Why Campus Anti-Israel
Activity Flunks Bigotry 101, which is
available at wwwajc.org .
U.N. Approves
Anti-Israel Motions
New York/JTA — The United Nations
General Assembly overwhelmingly
approved six resolutions criticizing
Israeli policies.
Though such resolutions are passed
annually, most noteworthy was the U.S.
vote against a resolution condemning
the Israeli law that declares Jerusalem as
Israel's undivided capital.
.
For the past two years, the United
States has abstained on the resolution;
but this year, U.S. Ambassador John
Negroponte said the resolution pre-
judges key issues that must be resolved
in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian
U.N. observer, called the U.S. rejection
of the Jerusalem resolution "a slap in the
face" to all Arabs, Muslims and
Christians.
State Department
Critical Of Israel
Washington/JTA — The U.S. State
Department criticized Israeli forces for
destroying a United Nations food ware-
house in the Gaza Strip.
"We think it's critical that the Israelis
investigate the circumstances of that
incident and take immediate steps to
ensure that civilians and humanitarian
facilities are not harmed," State
Department spokesman Philip Reeker
said.
He urged Israel to "keep in mind the
consequences of their actions, to com-
plete their anti-terrorist operations as
quickly as possible and take steps to pre-
vent further civilian casualties."
Israel's army acknowledged that sol-
diers struck the warehouse during a
recent raid.
"We are still investigating the circum-
stances of why the warehouse was hit,"
an army spokeswoman said. She added
that Israeli soldiers in Gaza had not
been informed of the. warehouse's exis-
tence and had therefore not known they
should steer clear of the building.
Film Screening
Aids Hebrew U.
New York/JTA — Actor Billy Crystal
held a benefit screening of his new
movie for Hebrew University, motivated
by the July 31 bombing at the school.
"I hated what I saw on television,"
Crystal said of the deadly attack at the
Jerusalem-based school. He spoke
moments before the screening in New
York of Analyze That, which stars
Crystal and Robert DeNiro.
Crystal also supports a theater pro-
gram sponsored by the university called
"Peace Through the Performing Arts,"
which promotes cooperation among
Jewish, Palestinian and Israeli Arab
students.
GALAXY OF NOBEL LAUREATES
The United.States has become the world's dominant economic and military
power. Its high tech, pharmaceutical and biomedical industries, bellwethers
of today's global progress, are uneqUaled. And more money is spent here
on basic scientific research than in any other country. Without question,
our domestic research over the last fifty years has underpinned much of the
world's material gain. _
As a matter of national pride, Americans have won more than two-
thirds of Nobel Prizes for Physiology or Medicine during the last two
decades, as well as the great majority of major awards in all scientific
disciplines. As a matter of Jewish pride, a disproportionately large number
of Nobelists--both American and foreign--were of Jewish descent. Meet
but a few:
PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE
•""*"' Physiologist Joseph Erlanger (1874-1965)
employed newly developed electronic equip
ment to co-discover in 1932 that different
*:: fibers within nerve cords performed different
types of function--an unexpected finding.
• Another co-discovery by German-born
American biochemist Fritz Lipmann (1899-1986), isolated a highly
important factor he named coenzyme A which helps body cells convert
food into energy. The world famed Pasteur Institute in Paris has long been
a mecca for prize-winning biological research. It was in its laboratories
that Francois Jacob (1920-) determined how certain genes within bacteria
control their activities and hereditary traits, as well as produce enzymes and
RNA.
Salvador Luria (1912-91) also fo-
cused his microscope on bacterial behavior: on
viruses called phage particles which infect
bacteria and may mutate in the process. A
World War Two pilot in the Royal Australian
Air Force, Sir Bernard Katz (191 1-) was an
equally bold investigator of muscle and nerve
function. He joined British research teams
which brilliantly untangled many complexities of nerve transmissions, for
which he was also knighted in 1969.
PHYSICS
Beside two other Stanford University prize-
winning associates stood Jerome Friedman (1930-)
who experimentally confirmed a theory advanced by
physicist. Murray Gell-Mann a generation before---
that protons and neutrons were composed of quarks,
the most fundamental of all subatomic particles. Just
as fundamental to researchers is the tool itself used for
studying such particles, the bubble chamber. For its invention and
development, physics professor Donald Glaser (1926-) was among the
youngest--at age 34--to receive a Nobel in the sciences. Emilio Segre
(1905-89) shared the discovery of the oppositely-charged antiproton before
emigrating from Italy to the U.S. An early student of Enrico Fermi and a
Los Alamos team leader, he also co-discovered plutonium-239 which
powered the two atomic bombs that defeated Japan.
Like many ranking German- and Italian-born scientists under pre-
war Nazi and Fascist rule (including Emilio Segre), physicist James Frank
(1882-1964) eventually sought freedom in the U.S. His investigations of the
structure of matter and the motions of electrons earned a Nobel Prize and
a place in the Manhattan Project where he too helped develop the first
atomic bomb.
Finally, Max Born (1882-1970) was hailed in scientific circles as
a leading authority of his day on quantum mechanics, atomic structure and
the dynamics of matter. In collaboration with Erwin Schrodinger, he
devised mathematical descriptions of the first laws of a new quantum
theory. Born became a British subject also accorded many other
international honors.
-Saul Stadtmauer
Visit many more notable Jews at our website: www.dorledor.org
COMMISSION FOR THE DISSEMINATION OF JEWISH HISTORY
Walter & Lea Field, Founders/Sponsors
Irwin S. Field, Chairperson
Harriet F. Siden, Chairperson
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2002
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