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President Peres called for the utilization of the scientific, medical and agricultural knowledge that exists in Israel

Peres proposed to take advantage of Israel's scientific superiority in the field of agriculture and to commercialize the knowledge it has acquired, among other things to strengthen ties with countries that are not Christian and therefore do not know the history of the people of Israel, and first and foremost China

President Shimon Peres at the Fisher Institute's Space Day conference, Air Force Base, January 31, 2008. Photo: Leon Rosenblum for the Hidan site
President Shimon Peres at the Fisher Institute's Space Day conference, Air Force Base, January 31, 2008. Photo: Leon Rosenblum for the Hidan site

On Tuesday, the Biomed conference of the Israeli life sciences industry (ILSI - BIOMED) opened solemnly in Tel Aviv, and together with it the second meeting of the International Stem Cell Organization. The opening remarks at the conference were provided by the President of the State of Israel, Shimon Peres, and the Minister of Trade and Industry, Eli Yishai.

The president chose to open the gathering with a birthday blessing for the sixtieth year of the State of Israel, and with an expression of admiration and joy at the transformation of the shekel into an international trade currency. The value of economic strength outlined the rest of his words, which focused on the differences between the countries today, which partly stem from their economic strength and partly from the policies they adopt.

"Countries that have become rich change their menus, and as a result encounter new problems." Peres said, citing as an example the high percentage of diabetes in developed countries. Money, it turns out, is not the key to every problem. "... I don't know what is more important today - oil or high-tech... in ten years, oil has become more expensive 12 times. There is no science or industry that has jumped so high... but the countries that have oil do not necessarily become rich successful countries."

Peres demonstrated his claim by pointing to two countries in particular - Abu Dhabi and Dubai. "...we see that they are huge from a financial point of view, but dwarf from a political point of view. They use their money to pay so that terrorism does not threaten their regime... Those two countries could solve all the problems of the Middle East, but they will not share their money."

The real question, according to Peres, is how many scientists do we have per square kilometer. He emphasizes that we cannot ignore the facts of life. As China is big, so we are small. "...we cannot escape our smallness." said the president, but immediately added that our small country has all the necessary tools to become an important player in the international market. "Israel can become a well-developed laboratory... We cannot compete with large countries in all fields of science and industry. But we can choose several areas in which we will be strong. The first is agriculture. It is related to our vision, according to which the Jews should return to the land and cultivate it. Some of our best people went to be farmers in kibbutzim and moshavim. As a result we have a better agriculture. Israeli agriculture today is almost entirely scientific. 95% of our agriculture is based on hi-tech... farmers have computers that are connected to the trees and measure how much water the trees receive."

Peres proposed to take advantage of Israel's scientific superiority in the field of agriculture and to commercialize the knowledge we acquired from the implementation of the vision. "We would like to have good relations with China," he said, and considered several alternative ways of engaging. "Serious attempts on the part of Israel to explain to them exactly who Moses was will probably fail for them and for us... but attempts to transfer agriculture to them can be more successful."

The second field in which the president saw great potential for the State of Israel is medicine. "Medicine is very suitable for Judaism... our greatest philosopher was also a doctor - Rambam... We are number four in the world in the number of patents per head in the field of bio-pharma. It is clear that Israel has the intellectual potential to become a medical center of the life sciences. It suits our character, it doesn't require a lot of space and it can place us in a good place in terms of relations with other countries in the world. Medicine is a biased science. If you make a good computer, people will buy it. But if you produce good medical equipment, or a good medicine, or a good doctor and you save lives, the people will remember you forever and thank you, no matter where they are from."

The third and last area that Peres talked about concerns the problem of state security. "We cannot turn one army into two, but we can arm each soldier better. The army does not march on its stomach but on the media... We must develop, once again, our advantages in the fields of hi-tech and technology."

Peres ended his speech by calling on the Israeli government and the various companies in Israel and the world to provide funding to investors in the field of biomedical engineering in Israel. "I believe the opportunities are here," concluded the president, "and we must not miss them."

TMT Minister Eli Yishai took the stage after the president, but said few words. He briefly reviewed the great contribution of the life sciences industry to the Israeli economy, and stated that the field is a source of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.

"The field of life sciences is a knowledge-rich field based on quality human resources... I would like to note with joy the integration of many immigrant scientists from different countries in Israeli companies. This strengthens the Israeli presence and its penetration into new markets..." said the minister and added that the government is trying to reverse the direction of the brain drain, and that last month with their assistance and initiative two conferences were held in Washington and Boston with the aim of returning Israeli scientists.

6 תגובות

  1. point:
    You again generalize unnecessarily and without justification and it's a shame - because in the end I hope it's clear to you that you're shooting yourself in the foot by discouraging good people from taking the reins.
    The politicians are not of one piece and there are both real ideologues and talented people among them.
    Peres himself, by the way, is definitely one of these groups (I'm talking about Peres of today and I don't want to get into a debate about Peres in the past)

  2. 1. The blame is on the system, the public is stupid and therefore the public pays.
    2. Michael: This shows how despicable the politician is. His lust for power is so great that he is ready to absorb all exposure, etc.
    3. The "actions of the leaders" they do nothing, if you judge by the number of hours they spent as a "leader" you will find that a total of 99% of the time they did nothing.

  3. point:
    I can understand your approach but I don't think it is justified.
    In general, your claim towards leaders is, unfortunately, correct, but two things should be noted:
    1. This situation is to a large extent the fault of those who are not leaders - see Yotam's article - the good are not ready to take the lead even though they know it is necessary. This fact casts some doubt on their classification as "good".
    2. There are exceptions - good people who came to the conclusion that if all the good ones run away from the leadership "fire will come out of the hat and eat the cedars of Lebanon" and decided to give up the comforts of life in the stands or behind the scenes and move to the front of the stage.

    The audience watching the show is extremely diverse and includes people who are much worse than the worst politicians.
    A person who puts himself in the front of the stage is exposed to the criticism and the tomato barrages of Kvalam - also from the great harots. This is incredible heroism.
    Whoever decided to underestimate all politicians decided to underestimate the heroes among them and indirectly increases the tendency of good people to be absent from politics.

    Since we are all, after all, only human and since our exposure to politicians usually concerns their decisions on issues that are very important to us, we tend to develop unbalanced emotions towards them. We don't see them in our day-to-day life where we are used to forming an opinion about people, but only in moments when they have to make very important decisions on issues that are often controversial.
    We are also always sure that on those controversial issues our position is the right one and ignore our human tendency to make different decisions in a situation where the responsibility rests with someone else.

    In light of all this, and out of a desire to encourage good people to take responsibility, I find that the best way is to refer only to the actions of the leaders and not try to form an opinion on their personality.

  4. To Michael.
    The problem with me is that I deceive the statesmen from the beginning. These are scheming people whose mouths and hearts are not equal. In short, human worms.

  5. point:
    I actually heard many scientific ideas from him.
    Although none of them were his idea but that's totally fine.
    The role of a statesman is not the creation of scientific ideas, but the promotion of those of them (practiced by others) that may benefit the country or the world, on the one hand, and the creation of the infrastructure that will allow scientists to research and create new ideas, on the other hand. Peres deals with these two issues non-stop and relentlessly, and his action is particularly noticeable against the background of the complete absence of this type of activity by the vast majority of the country's leadership.

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