By Marcella Rosen & Anne Etra

Bill Gates recently joined 2,000 attendees at Microsoft Israel’s Think Next event and declared: “Israeli technology is improving the world.” But herein lies the rub: no one knows it. The U.S. media focuses mostly on the political Israel and not on Israeli citizens who work quietly each day to solve some of the world’s biggest problems.

Untold News was founded in 2010 to change all that.

By accentuating the positive, with a laser-like focus on Israeli innovation, Untold News provides a one-two punch to all the negative media bias aimed at Israel. Strictly non-political, Untold News brings news of Israeli contributions in the areas of science, technology, medicine, agriculture, and the environment, in novel and unexpected ways.

Why are these innovation stories important? Because most people have no clue that their cell phones are Israeli, their flash drives are Israeli, that Israel’s drip irrigation process feeds millions worldwide, that Israelis are at the forefront of curing cancer, or that an Israeli created an exoskeleton to help the disabled to walk again. (That last one is the amazing Rewalk, and the U.S.Department of Veterans Affairs just approved it to be paid via insurance.)

Why is Israel so innovative? Call it a confluence of specifics: a harsh desert reality, a highly educated population from more than 80 countries; a citizens-army military that encourages individual thinking and questioning; a fearless, hard-nosed realism built into the Israeli psyche; and a great deal of heart.

There’s a ‘can-do’ attitude in Israel that many of our global challenges are solvable. For example, Israeli mom and computer engineer Daphna Nissenbaum was tired of recycling all the time, so she invented biodegradable food packaging. When charged with solving the problem of ‘smelly socks’ for long-serving IDF soliders, chemist Aharon Gedanken took it a step further and developed anti-bacterial fabrics, which may well prevent one million hospital deaths caused each year due to infections. Israeli culture fuels this desire to think creatively and not settle for mediocrity.

Untold News aims to tell these vital stories, and to reach those not only committed to Israel but also, Americans who are neutral and know little about her. To this end, we have made some solid inroads:

• Our Facebook community has some 560,000 fans, who share our posts on Israeli innovation worldwide.
• Our book, Tiny Dynamo, features 21 case studies of Israeli innovation and has been used as a primer on Israeli ingenuity by Jewish foundations, Christian radio stations, Israeli consuls, and political advocacy groups.
• To reach Hispanics in the U.S., we published El Pequeno Dinamo, and held San Francisco and Miami symposia between Israeli and Latino entrepreneurs. More than 36,000 El Pequeno Dinamo Facebook fans now know about Israeli innovation.
• We launched Israel Is On It, a provocative, million dollar paid media campaign aimed at millennials, whose support for Israel is declining (according to Pew Research). Israel is On It ads have appeared in the New York Times, on Vice.com, and soon at Buzzfeed.com. If the Nike swoosh promises you’ll dunk that basket, and the Milk mustache implies protein for strong bones, Israel Is On It represents Israeli innovation and progress. See the example below. When someone clicks on this ad, they go directly to our website IsraelIsOnIt.com, where they discover just how Israelis have ensured that electronic data is safe from hackers, or that Israel’s ‘WeCU’ security system protects them from an airport terrorist attack.

We know that Israel has almost as many start-ups as all of Europe combined, with just 1/100th of the population; that last year $12 billion was invested in Israeli ingenuity; that Israeli universities create ecosystems for innovation; and that Israel has trained 260,000 professionals, from Chile to Chad to China, to help them thrive and prosper since the state was founded in 1948. But it’s vital that young Americans discover something they don’t know: that Israeli contributions make all of our lives healthier, more efficient, safer, better. Please help us spread the word.

Marcella Rosen is a member of Central Synagogue and the Founder and President of Untold News and Anne Etra the Publishing Director of Untold News.