By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
Early August brought together the Seattle Chamber of Commerce with local Jewish community members. They were brainstorming ways of increasing trade with the city of Beer Sheva, in Israel’s Negev region, one of 21 sister cities to Seattle. Beer Sheva’s population of 133,000 is home to Jews, Muslim Bedouins, and the fastest growing university in Israel, the Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
Prof. Jehuda Haddad, president of the Shamoon College of Engineering at Ben Gurion University, attended the meeting to promote the school that focuses on desert research, high technology, medicine, and regional development. His highly produced PowerPoint presentation revealed a sophisticated program that is providing skilled jobs to an impoverished Bedouin population.
“One out of every five is born a Bedouin in our area,” Shamoon told the lunchtime group as they met in a downtown conference room at the offices of the Benjamin Law Group.
He said the college also recruits and trains as many women to be engineers as men.
“In Israel, 20 percent of the population are women,” he said, “but at Shamoon, 25 percent of the students there are women.”
Beer Sheva also has a vibrant and modern culture, he said, and the shared interests and values could enrich each city.
“The school is located in the heart of the city and is the only university [school] with two campuses — one in Ashdod and one in Beer Sheva,” he said. “There are now 3,000 students there.”
In February of this year, the American Friends of Sami Shamoon College of Engineering opened its first American office in Manhattan in hopes of raising $12 million to finance a projected 130 percent increase in the school’s enrollment, from 3,000 to 7,000 students.
BGU sponsors the tuition and living expenses for the Bedouins who commit to the program. They also serve a growing population of Ethiopian immigrants that continue to relocate inside Israel.
“We give them everything, including computers and a scholarship,” said Haddad.
Haddad, who immigrated to Israel from Tunisia when he was 8 years old, earned his doctorate from Ben Gurion University.
In May of this year, JTNews editor Joel Magalnick spent time in the Negev with the Bedouins as the guest of BGU. What he found were a people torn between their loyalty to the past and their potential for a new future.
“It’s mostly the women who are going on to higher education these days at Ben Gurion University,” wrote Magalnick in an article about the Bedouins. “In the past few years, we have seen the first female Bedouin doctors, social workers, and doctoral candidates.”
Another pressing issue surrounding the burgeoning demographic is that they could become a security risk for Israel. Because the Bedouins are Arabs who are full Israeli citizens, investing in their economic success may be the best deterrent against the lure of militant Islamic anti-Israel rhetoric that is so prevalent in the region.
“There are worries that if this continues it could create resentment that would lead to militant Islamic activity within Israel’s borders, if it hasn’t happened already,” added Magalnick.
On a lighter note, Beer Sheva also happens to be the city in the world with the most chess masters per capita, according to Andrew Benjamin, an attorney and the president of the Seattle-Beer Sheva Sister City Association.
He’s hoping to arrange a binational chess tournament with the help of a Seattle company called Chessmate and teachers and students at T.T. Minor Elementary School in Seattle.
“The idea is to connect kids in Beer Sheva with kids in Seattle,” said Benjamin. “We’re going to have a computerized chess tournament, possibly in October after the holidays. There might be four or five games at 8 or 9 a.m. for the kids in Seattle when it would be five in the afternoon for the kids in Israel.”
The Biblical city is also attracting large high tech companies to the region.
“I’m going to recommend that we actually have a trade mission to Israel,” said Fred Taucher, chairman and CEO of Corporate Computer, Inc. “There’s already a lot of high tech in Israel.”
Computer chip maker Intel has a plant in Dimona, a short drive from Beer Sheva, that employs Bedouin women.
Tsering Yuthok, International Programs Coordinator for the City of Seattle’s Office of Intergovernmental Relations, wants to add a three-day trip to Beer Sheva in an already packed Trade Council trip to Abu Dhabi in January 2009.
“When you get people to go to one of our sister cities, it adds so much,” said Yuthok. “If the association endorses it, you will really have to make it very enticing.”
Locally, Seattleites can visit Beer Sheva Park in southeast Seattle positioned just east of Rainier Beach High School. The small lakefront park was dedicated in 1978, renovated and rededicated in 2004, and features a picnic site and boat launch.