How Israeli Technology Transformed an Inhospitable Strip of Desert into an Agricultural Powerhouse

Despite early Zionists’ focus on creating farming communities, the Jewish state’s economy is now more closely tied to software than to produce. But the old slogan of “making the desert bloom” remains a reality—and part of the story of Israeli technological innovation. Abigail Klein Leichman reports from an agronomic institute in the southeastern part of the country:

Maayan Kitron, coordinator of flower and herb research at Arava R&D, also provided visiting reporters with tastes of cherry tomatoes, peppers, and strawberries raised in this strip of the Negev desert stretching down Israel’s eastern border from the Dead Sea to Eilat. This is a place of long, punishing summers—hardly hospitable conditions for agriculture.

“The average summer day is 40-plus degrees” Celsisus, or 104 Fahrenheit, “and at night the temperature drops only 10 degrees” [50 Farhenheit], says Kitron, who also has a family farm in the central Arava. Nevertheless, the R&D center’s greenhouses grow Gulliver’s spinach (a spinach-like leafy green that thrives in hot climates and keeps in the fridge for a month), Momordica (a bitter melon containing potential nutraceutical substances including a “natural insulin”), cherry tomatoes, eggplants, melons, cucumbers, and exotic crops like kiwano (horned African melon).

Kitron says the average annual rainfall in the Arava Valley is 50 millimeters (2 inches). This year, less than 20 millimeters fell. “Our water comes from about 60 wells we’ve drilled, all connected to one control system in Eilat,” she says, adding that now they’re also getting some water piped from a desalination plant in Ashkelon.

The saline well water must be treated, but the upside is that irrigating with saline water results in sweeter produce. (Kitron explains that’s because of osmosis: the salt concentration of the water causes the plants’ roots to release more sugars.) . . . Drip irrigation, an Israeli innovation, makes this workable. But the heat and the not-particularly-fertile soil are also challenging.

Read more at Israel21c

More about: Israeli agriculture, Israeli technology, Negev

Why South Africa Has Led the Legal War against Israel

South Africa filed suit with the International Court of Justice in December accusing Israel of genocide. More recently, it requested that the court order the Jewish state to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip—something which, of course, Israel has been doing since the war began. Indeed, the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) has had a long history of support for the Palestinian cause, but Orde Kittrie suggests that the current government, which is plagued by massive corruption, has more sinister motives for its fixation on accusing Israel of imagined crimes:

ANC-led South Africa has . . . repeatedly supported Hamas. In 2015 and 2018, the ANC and Hamas signed memoranda of understanding pledging cooperation against Israel. The Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper that previously won an international award for exposing ANC corruption, has reported claims that Iran “essentially paid the ANC to litigate against Israel in the ICJ.”

The ANC-led government says it is motivated by humanitarian principle. That’s contradicted by its support for Russia, and by [President Cyril] Ramaphosa’s warmly welcoming a visit in January by Mohamed Dagalo, the leader of the Sudanese-Arab Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. Ramaphosa’s smiling, hand-holding welcome of Dagalo occurred two months after the RSF’s systematic massacre of hundreds of non-Arab Sudanese refugees in Darfur.

While the ANC has looted its own country and aided America’s enemies, the U.S. is insulating the party from the consequences of its corruption and mismanagement.

In Kittrie’s view, it is “time for Congress and the Biden administration to start helping South Africa’s people hold Ramaphosa accountable.”

Read more at The Hill

More about: International Law, Iran, South Africa