Jerusalem Post names nine Israeli developments of global significance
The Israeli publication The Jerusalem Post has published a selection of nine developments created by Israeli inventors or companies that, according to the newspaper, have had a significant impact on energy, agriculture, medicine, transport and defense. The list includes solar water heaters, drip irrigation, semiconductor memory technologies, cardioverter-defibrillators, PillCam capsules, the Waze navigation service, Watergen systems, Iron Dome and Mobileye.
Energy, water and agriculture
The publication mentioned physicist Zvi Tabor, who created the Tabor Selective Surface technology for thermal panels in the early 1950s. It became the basis of the modern solar water heater. According to The Jerusalem Post, 95% of Israeli households use solar water-heating systems based on this technology, and more than 1.4 million such installations have been installed in the country.
Another development was drip irrigation, the concept of which was patented in the early 1960s by Simcha Blass, one of the founders of the water company Mekorot. Netafim, founded by Blass, now operates in 110 countries, and its systems are used on more than 15 million hectares. The newspaper also highlighted Watergen, which produces drinking water from atmospheric moisture and has installations in more than 90 countries.
Medicine, digital technologies and transport
The list included non-volatile semiconductor memory, created in 1971 by Dov Frohman, the founder and first general manager of Intel Israel. The publication links this development to the subsequent advancement of data storage technologies and flash memory. The selection also names the implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, developed by Polish-Israeli-American physician Michel Mirowski. The first such device was implanted in a patient on February 4, 1980, at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
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The Jerusalem Post also mentioned the PillCam camera capsule, developed with the participation of engineer Gavriel Iddan. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it in 2001. The capsule transmits images of the digestive tract to an external receiver; since then, it has been used in more than 4 million procedures in over 80 countries.
Navigation, security and defense
The Waze service, founded by Ehud Shabtai, Amir Shinar and Uri Levine in 2008, uses drivers' reports of traffic jams, accidents and police to build routes. Google acquired the company in 2013 for approximately $1.3 billion. At the beginning of 2026, the service had about 151 million monthly active users, according to the publication.
The list also includes the Iron Dome missile defense system, whose first successful interception took place on April 7, 2011. It was developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries with significant U.S. funding. The final entry is Mobileye, a developer of driver-assistance systems and autonomous driving technologies. As of 2024, its technologies were used in approximately 200 million vehicles worldwide, The Jerusalem Post writes.
