Great Things Come in Small Packages

-By Rosa Says

Israel may be small in size but she packs a strong punch. Despite continual conflicts over her right to exist as a state, the little-engine-that-could has managed to build more start up companies per capital than larger countries like China and India. 

It appears that Israeli citizens don't mince words nor do they waste time. Hence, her cutting edge advancements in the technological field over the last sixty-six years are cause for astonishment. Is this the same land that Mark Twain once lamented over - "Jerusalem is mournful, dreary, and lifeless. Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes."?

After I started doing research, let me just say, I was gobsmacked. The merchandise whose innovation can be traced back to Israel is logic defying.  Well, maybe not. After all, this is a country whose recent existence defies reason. Israelis themselves enjoy pushing boundaries and roaming into new territories of thought: they have a knack for building on old ideas as well as thinking outside the box. For instance, several discoveries were recently discovered by mere "happenstance," (translation: it's all because of G-d). Modern drip irrigation was stumbled on by Israeli engineer Simcha Blass who noticed a tree growing bigger than its neighbors in the desert. After taking a closer look, he discovered why. The tree was being fed by a leaking water pipe. Boom, the water drip irrigation system was born. Israel began blooming. 

Here are just a few well known examples of big selling ideas that can be sourced back to this midget sized middle eastern country. For parents: baby sense monitors, the no-touch, no-radiation devices invented by the company HiSense to help prevent crib death. Its alarm goes off if a baby's breathing ceases for over twenty seconds. Next, for the office hobnobs there's the USB flash disk invented by three young Israelis back in 1999. It took the computer world by storm: overnight, floppy disks became a relic of the past. For text message addicts here's a tasty bit of information to sink your teeth into: ICQ was the first stand-alone instant messaging program invented by Mirabilis, that is, until AOL (America online) bought it off them in 1998 for $407 million. Next, Israel has something for family recreation as well: Rummikub was a game constructed by a Romanian named Ephraim Hertzano in the 1930's after he emigrated to Israel. In 1977, it became the number one played game in America. Last but not least, Saban entertainment, a world wide American-Israeli TV company, was the original writer for popular TV show Power Rangers, among other hits. It's not the only project Israel has teamed up with America to work on.

Israel doesn't hold her ideas close. She slaps her hand on the table and says, "How can I help?"

   

Recently, Israelis have been teaming up with America in their quest for a cheaper, cleaner and less conventional way to produce free emission energy than hydroelectricity. People are trying to power up without sicking the earth of its natural resources. Recently, Kobi Birnhack introduced his ocean brick vision. as a way to save energy. It involves lowering huge, hollowed out cement blocks, with which to support wind turbines, underwater. The turbines are turned on by a power grid nearby and thus start turning on the ocean bed. This is how Kobi invented a cheap, clean way to send purified, wave energy state wide in America. 

It's not random that Israel has recieved the nickname 'Cinderella Country.'