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My Visit to Israel

December 16, 2008




I thought I’d take a moment to share with you a bit about my recent trip to Israel.

I was honored to recently take part in a delegation of New York State Assembly Members who went to Israel from December 6th to 12th led by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. About twenty of us travelled together on a visit that was financed and organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and the Government of Israel.

It was a packed schedule. We met with the Mayor of Jersualem, Nir Barkat. He told us about municipal initiatives which were modeled after New York City. We met with Prime Minister Ehud Olmery for a frank discussion of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace process. We also met with US Amabassador to Israel, James B. Cunningham, to review relations between our two countries.

In between dignitaries, we had the great pleasure of meeting with ordinary citizens. In this photo below, I am pictured with an Israeli social worker and an Ethiopian immigrant woman who has resettled in Israel’s growing Ethiopian Jewish neighborhoods.




One very interesting stop was at the corporate headquarters of Israeli Aerospace Industries, a company that does a lot of business in New York State. It was great to meet the people behind a company that is important to both the Israeli and New York economies.




To show solidarity with Israeli citizens, we spent some time in the town of Sderot. Situated on the border of the Gaza Strip, Sderot and its citizens face the harsh daily reality of Hamas rocket attacks. This situation was underscored when as we were visiting the Barzilai Medical Center, rockets exploded in the area.

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Written by Micah · Filed Under Blogroll 

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