2003-09-05 Nahal Oz
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Short takes from Sha'ar Hanegev San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage,
Sept. 5, 2003 |
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2003-09-05 Nahal Oz |
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By Donald H. Harrison NAHAL OZ, Israel— There's a new baby in what was once the "children¹s house" at this kibbutz in Sha'ar Hanegev. It's a telecommunications company called Oz Vision that enables video from security cameras to be sent quickly over telephone lines. Oz (pronounced Owes) in Hebrew means "fortitude," and if you want to call CEO Shahar Belkin "the Wizard of Oz," such fortitude means he will grimace only a little. The kibbutz member started the company in 1995, after serving as an electronic engineer in the Israel Defense Forces and then studying missile technology at Ben-Gurion University in Be'ersheva. The main customers of Oz Vision are off-site video monitoring centers, where security personnel keep video records of events at remote sites. Oz Vision enables a monitoring station to transform an incident captured on video into a short clip that then can be sent as an e-mail attachment to a customer. Whereas competitors require cable or other high-speed modems to transmit the video images, Belkin said, Oz Vision has developed a method for transmitting the information at high speed over standard phone lines. "Even in the United States," Belkin said, "70 percent of the people still access the Internet by dial-up phone lines." Spotting a possible intruder on videotape, then relaying the relevant portion of that tape to someone to identify the intruder, has obvious practicality on this kibbutz near the Gaza border, where intrusions by Palestinian terrorists are always a concern. But the technology has its peacetime uses as well. Suppose you are away for the weekend and your son from college comes home unexpectedly, tripping off an alarm. Transmitting the video image of your son to you by e-mail takes 30 to 60 seconds, and you can tell the security company not to worry. A store or factory can be monitored similarly. The United States is Oz Vision's strongest market. The company maintains a sales office in Boston, and at a recent security convention in Las Vegas its system was honored as a top product of the year, Belkin said. * * * NIR AM, Israel— Nissan Nir, a pioneer who helped secure Israel's claim to the Negev, is an authority on water's ability to transform the desert. There is a large reservoir of hot water in the Sha'ar Hanegev region at the depth of 800 meters, he said. For about $2 million, this resource could be developed into a hot-water springs resort that could lure tourists to the area, he estimated. When Nir talks about water, residents of Sha'ar Hanegev listen. The Negev Defense and Water Museum in a former water storage facility here is testament to what can happen when dreams are actualized about water in the desert. Back in 1943, LeoYehuda Picard discovered an east-west aquifer lying under the northern Negev desert. A 1,000-cubic-meter storage tank was built to hold the water. Then, after World War II, representatives of the Jewish Agency in Palestine quietly purchased 220 kilometers of pipe that had been laid in London to fight fires caused by German bombing runs. Nir was one of Picard's assistants who helped lay the pipes in the Negev in 1946. Under the noses of the British, the Jews created infrastructure to transport water to 11 new kibbutzim in the desert. On a single night during the High Holidays period in 1946, the Jews erected houses at each of the 11 kibbutzim, proudly flying the Jewish flag over these new settlements. "The British thought if Jews put up the kibbutzim in one night, 'we will take them away in one night,'" Nir related. "But the Home Office said that this would be an embarrassment to the world." The water storage tank "became a center for the Negev." When partition of Palestine into two states was recommended, the British thought that the Negev should go to the Arabs. A United Nations commission was sent to the Negev to make its own recommendations. "The U.N. commission saw development by Jews in the Negev," Nir related. "We grew some vegetables and gladiolas. The manager of the commission, a judge from Sweden, thought we had just stuck the gladiolas into the sand, but he found out otherwise when he pulled one of them up by the roots. The Guatemalans (who were members of the commission) said "if the Negev goes to the Arabs, it will stay desert. With the Jews it will bloom." Accordingly, it was recommended that the Negev be incorporated into the proposed Jewish state. For Jewish settlers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the story of how the Negev pioneers created new "facts on the ground" to change the geopolitical situation is an inspiration. Nir, the water pioneer, is mum about his feelings about that. For him, there is another important conclusion to be drawn from the lesson. With the proper application of water, the desert landscape can be transformed— and even turned into a hot-springs resort. * * * GEVIM, Israel— This kibbutz has its milk cows, chickens and vegetable fields, and it also operates the Poleg plastic-sheeting factory. But beyond that it has location, location, location. Gevim is next door to Sapir College, which is named for the Israel's late Finance Minister Pinchas Sapir, who at the end of his career chaired the Jewish Agency for Israel. There are perhaps 6,000 residents of Sha'ar Hanegev, while the college population is well over 7,000. Professors, students and staff all need places to stay, and Gevim is happy to "give 'em" some well-located choices. In addition to the college, which houses the offices of the Sha'ar Hanegev municipality, another close neighbor of the kibbutz is the Sapir Industrial Park, where Amdocs and other major public companies are being lured. "Gevim is the most sought-after place to rent houses by teachers, lecturers and students alike," said Yair Harari, the kibbutz's general manager. To date, besides the 450 kibbutz members and children, about 200 outsiders live on the kibbutz, with more likely to come soon. Gevim hosts student dormitories as well as a 138-home "community neighborhood" whose residents live within the kibbutz borders but not under its socialistic rules. |
