Ellington

When Israel is mentioned in the headline of a news story these days, a reader expects words like “suicide bombings,” “negotiations,” and “settlements” to follow closely afterward. However — unrealized by many — there is much more to the country than just the conflicts in which it constantly finds itself engaged.

Israel is responsible for the development of a disproportionate amount of technology and advances considering that its citizens only make up .001 percent — or 1/1000 — of the world’s population.

So why hasn’t the country’s advances, developments, and new technologies appeared in any newspapers? Israel deserves more than just a violent headline, and should be recognized for more than its conflicts.

Manufacturers there developed the cell phone, pill-cam, USB stick, instant messaging, Nanowire, the world’s smallest DNA computing machine system, unmanned aerial vehicles, and an improved drip irrigation system whose use has spread around the world. The media’s focus needs to change.

Israel has the largest ratio of university degrees to population in the world, the third-highest rate of entrepreneurship, the most museums per capita, the most start-up companies in the world per capita, as well as having the second-most start-up companies overall (trailing only the United States).

Many countries, even much bigger ones, can’t claim nearly as many achievements.

That most of this isn’t common public knowledge is both frustrating and vexing. Unfortunately, almost all of the news reported on Israel is about the Arab-Israeli conflict, so Israel’s scientific advances get overshadowed.

And now it’s happened again, this time concerning a possible cure for cancer.

According to the latest reports from Israeli company Vaxil BioTherapeutics, its scientists have developed a vaccine that — should it be successful — would eliminate 90 percent of all types of cancer. ImMucin is basically a cancer vaccine that works like a drug and would train the body’s T-cells to attack any cell that contains the molecule MUC1, a molecule only cancer cells have, which would also prevent any side effects.

ImMucin is currently in Phase III clinical trials — testing on humans — at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem. If testing is successful, it’s likely the vaccine will be on the market within the next six years.

Unfortunately, almost all the sources that have reported on the vaccine’s development have been Israeli ones. No major news company has picked this up. Not the BBC. Not the Associated Press. Not FOX News. Not even Reuters. No one.

It’s time the world’s mainstream media took a good hard look at itself in the mirror and realized that Israel has something good to add to the world. Maybe then they could stop reporting only on conflict and start giving Israel, the Middle East’s only liberal democracy, the positive reputation it so profoundly deserves.

Reach opinion writer Nathan Taft at opinion@dailyuw.com.