Clean-tech renewable energy is good for us and good for the planet. It would be good to free ourselves from dependency upon oil-rich repressive regimes who sit on our wallets as much as they sit on our Western values: regimes such as Saudi Arabia that quash the civil liberties we hold dear.

One country in the Middle East that is working toward this goal of ending our reliance on fossil fuels, Israel, is the same country that birthed other technologies such as drip irrigation that sustains agriculture in arid areas, solar energy and other innovations such as instant messaging, Internet telephone and wireless computer chips.

As part of a 2008 education campaign in Israel, a levy on plastic bags was passed into law to fund the provision of reusable bags to shoppers.

An old Jewish joke describes how God led Moses through the desert to the Holy Land for 40 years (he refused to ask his wife for directions), through much hardship, only to lead the Israelite nation to the only place in the Middle East without a drop of oil. If Moses is the father of the Jewish people, then necessity is the mother of invention for their energy needs.

Two thousand years later, not much has changed. Israel is considered an “island-state,” with most of its capacity produced from imported fossil fuels. With 60 percent of the population of more than 7 million residing along the narrow coastal strip along the Mediterranean, it is among one of the densest countries in the world, situated on land about the size of Rhode Island with few natural resources.

Israel’s energy consumption reflects its unique combination of European living standards with the rapid growth in fossil-based energy demand, typical of developing countries.

For these reasons, Israel has focused on clean-tech, renewable energy, recognizing the need to expand its power generation capacity with sensitivity to global warming and greenhouse gas emissions. A pioneer in solar energy and with a proven track record in high-tech and computer-related innovation, Israel is focusing on the next big thing: preparing the world for life without coal and oil. The Israeli government is encouraging cutting-edge technologies in the clean-tech sector.

Perhaps the country’s best known clean-tech company is Project Better Place, which aims to activate a network of charging stations for electric cars across Israel. This would be one of the most extensive grids of its kind in the world. Shai Agassi, of Project Better Place, says about half the cars in Israel will be electric by 2015. For more on Agassi’s vision for electric cars, visit http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/512.

At a recent business conference in Israel, some 1,000 companies from around the world came to study Better Place’s progress. Agassi said: “When China comes to Israel to learn about electric cars, then something amazing is happening in Israel.”

Agassi’s family is a case study of “renewal energy” of the human variety. His family immigrated to Israel from Iraq in 1950, two years after Israel’s founding. The Agassis were part of a flood of almost a million Jewish refugees fleeing the wave of violent pogroms that swept the Arab world soon after the 1947 U.N. partition of Palestine into two states: one a homeland for the Jewish people, the other a homeland for the Palestinians.

These Jewish refugees came with nothing, having their homes, bank accounts and other assets frozen in Arab countries. How did this newly formed nation of penniless refugees transform a land that Mark Twain described as a “desolate country… silent, mournful expanse,” into one of the most dynamic entrepreneurial economies in the world?

Thanks to its self-reliance and need to develop technology for itself, Israel is considered an expert in green technology and its knowledge is widely sought to run projects throughout the world. For example, in January, Israel dedicated its largest on-grid solar project an $8.5 million collection of 40 solar panel systems that will supply 2 megawatts, enough power for about 500 homes. The government plans to issue bids for another 10 solar projects in the Negev Desert, with a total capacity of 60 megawatts.

Israeli company BrightSource Energy has taken its expertise overseas, helping to develop the Ivanpah Solar Electric System in California’s Mojave Desert, which is expected to be the largest solar thermal project in the world. Another Israeli-based operation, Siemens AG’s Solel Solar systems, is helping build the Mojave Solar Park, a 6,000-acre power-producing complex expected to go online next year.

Eight Israeli companies have been named in each of the past two years to the Global CleanTech 100, a respected industry barometer of the top 100 companies worldwide. Only the United States and Great Britain had more companies named. When General Electric Corp. handed out $100,000 grants last year as part of its international challenge to companies to build the next-generation power grid, two of the five winners were Israeli companies.

Even the olive branch, a well-recognized symbol of peace, has become a symbol of renewable energy. Olivebar, a company based in Israel, is using olive press waste to create a long-term, renewable energy source for wood-burning ovens to help prevent further deforestation in developing nations.

So maybe Moses was no fool after all. At the time, his goal was to find the best land for crop fields, not oil fields. Good land under proper stewardship can produce food indefinitely. But oil doesn’t last forever. What is valuable today may not be of value tomorrow. Israelis understand this challenge to survive all too well. So should the rest of us.

For more information on green energy in Israel, see a video clip at http://www.squidoo.com/Israel-in-the-sun.

— Gail Rubin is a founding member of the Davis Interfaith Coalition for Peace and Justice in the Middle East. For more information, visit http://www.pjme.org

Harry PotterÕs classmateÕs magic failed. Nearly beaten to death in an attempted honor killing, Afshan Azad, 22, has appeared in four of the ÒHarry PotterÓ movies as Padma Patil. She lives in England. Her crime: She was dating a Hindu man, a nonbeliever.

Recently, her father and brother tried to kill her. Afshan apparently was the target of a so-called honor killing by her own family. The young woman was attacked at her home in Manchester on May 21. No fantasy or fiction, and sadly, no magical rescue. ItÕs real.

I was recently in New York City for a family celebration and hailed a cab. Our cabbie was a friendly guy from Pakistan, and therein began a most fascinating discussion or, shall I say, lecture. I learned of his belief that Jews were really Muslims because the common patriarch Abraham was a Muslim (never mind that Abraham lived some two millennia before Islam was founded in the 7th Century C.E.)

I learned that Buddhists, Hindus and BahaÕis didnÕt stand a chance and surely would go straight to hell. My sweet 86-year-old mother became nervous. She began to clutch my arm when the cabbie started telling us that most thieves must have their hands chopped off, female adulterers deserve to be tortured and stoned, and nonbelievers are to be subservient.

So, here I was in cosmopolitan New York City, and this guy had no qualms revealing his true self. I began to wonder how many others believe as he does. One million? 10 million? Fifty million? We all know from history that even a tiny fraction of despots and lunatics can take away all human dignity from the remaining majority.

Are these two vignettes unrelated incidents or a reflection of an ideology sweeping the globe? An ideology whose supporters respect no religious boundaries and would just as soon throw acid in the face of a young Afghani Muslim girl wanting to learn to read and write, as they would murder a Christian for going to church.

What about the forgotten victims of this hateful ideology … those whom the Western media largely ignore? They are the Christians in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world where Jihadists are gaining ground. One Free World International (http://www.onefreeworldinternational.org) reports that every year some 200 million to 300 million Christians are persecuted in the world; 80 percent of them are in Muslim countries, with the rest in communist or other states (http://WorldChristianDatabase.org).

Note that the same Muslim nations that expelled or forced some 850,000 Jews from their homes after 1948 are now driving Christians out as well. Take, for example, the Egyptian Majed El Shafie. At age 18, he converted from Islam to Christianity. Under ShariÕa law, such conversions are a capital offense, enforced by the death penalty in some states. After he was imprisoned, tortured and put under house arrest in Alexandria, Egypt, he escaped and made his way to Israel, seeking asylum.

With the help of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem and the safe harbor he was given in Israel, he was ultimately repatriated to Canada in 2002.

Shafie continues to help other Christians through his One Free World organization. The Coptic Christians, who make up roughly 10 percent of the Egyptian population, are particularly vulnerable. In 2007, 27 Christian-owned houses and shops were torched in the southern village of Behma.

After last ChristmasÕ midnight Mass, six Coptic Christians and one Muslim security guard were gunned down by Islamic extremists as the worshippers exited their church. This cruel act took place in the vicinity of Luxor, Egypt, on Jan. 6, 2010, which is the evening before Coptic Orthodox Christmas. Yet such savagery doesnÕt even register a 1 on the mediaÕs Richter scale.

In other countries, such as Pakistan, ÒhududÓ laws prescribe mutilating punishments such as amputation, stoning and whipping for offenses including theft, robbery, unlawful sexual intercourse and consumption of alcohol. Just a few days ago, Cathnewsasia.com reported a shocking incident. Radical Islamists chopped off a Catholic professorÕs right hand as punishment for allegedly Òpreparing a question paper with objectionable remarks on Prophet Mohammed in March 2010.Ó

A spokesperson for the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church expressed anguish over the growing Talibanization in the south Indian city of Kerala where the barbarous act occurred. Elsewhere, an al Qaida-affiliated group in Somalia known as Harakat al-Shabaab Mujahideen (ÒMovement of Warrior YouthÓ) enforces cruel and inhumane punishment such as flogging, stoning to death and cutting off arms and feet. In 2008, Al-Shabaab stoned to death a 13-year-old girl in the field of a large soccer stadium on charges of adultery, when, in fact, she had been gang-raped. The group has vowed to expunge non-Muslims and Christians from Somalia.

Can one point to even one Arab or Muslim country in the Middle East where minorities thrive? Violent attacks by Jihadists are carried out against the Christian minority population in Egypt, Algeria, Iran, Yemen, Pakistan, Nigeria and Iraq. In Saudi Arabia, all Christian worship is forbidden, including within the U.S. Embassy. Christians have been imprisoned and deported for owning a Bible. Saudi Muslim citizens who convert to Christianity are subject to the death penalty.

In Jordan, Muslim woman are often murdered by their own families for intermarrying with Christians. As I write this article, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, 43, sits in an Iranian prison awaiting a death sentence by stoning, after being flogged 99 times for her 2006 conviction for adultery.

In the Gaza Strip and in the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank, the situation is equally bleak. Christians in both locales have had their churches vandalized and their Bibles burned, and live under a banner of Òdhimmitude,Ó which subjects them to intimidation, forced ÒprotectionÓ monetary payments and sexual harassment.

The Christian population in Bethlehem has been on a steady decline since the Palestinian Authority took control in the early to mid-1990s. There is only one place in the entire Middle East where the Christian population is increasing, not dwindling, and that is in Israel.

LetÕs be clear. We are talking about radical Jihadists, not individual Muslims. We are talking about the atrocities committed by those in the minority, albeit those with the desire and power to control the majority, who seek to ÒliberateÓ all Islamic land from the Òcrusaders.Ó This term includes Christians and Jews Ñ even though Jews were among the victims of the Crusades.

They seek to liberate Lebanon from Christians, Egypt from the Copts, Iran from the Christians and BahaÕis, and of course, Israel from the Jews. Even secular or moderate Muslim societies are considered to be apostates. Sufi Muslims suffer at the hands of Jihadists.

Look what happened when Hamas violently overthrew the Fatah government in the Gaza Strip, brutally murdering Palestinian Muslims Ñ their own people, including women, children and the elderly Ñ and tossing them from multi-story buildings. If humane treatment cannot be granted to their brethren who affiliate with rival parties, then what hope is there for the Christian ÒcrusadersÓ and for the Òsons of monkeys and pigs,Ó as Hamas is so fond of calling Jews?

We live in perilous times. It is particularly crucial that religious persecution be acknowledged and faced head on wherever it occurs. This is because such persecution runs counter to the deepest and most cherished values of personal liberty upon which America was founded. In the current world climate defined after 9/11, ignoring the persecution of Christians or any other religious group conveys to the terrorists the impression that the West, especially America, is weak, irreligious, decadent and ultimately vulnerable to similar terror.

To quote a man whose eloquence I wish I had, ÒThere was a time when drawing moral symmetries between two sides of every conflict was a mark of original thinking. Today, with Western intellectuals overextending two-sidedness to reckless absurdities, it reflects nothing but lazy conformity.Ó

Who is that man? Judea Pearl, father of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist who was beheaded in Karachi in 2002, upon speaking at the release of the film ÒA Mighty HeartÓ (http://festivaloffaithskc.org).

Those who take pride in murder ÑÊand those who revel when kids in pizzerias and office workers in skyscrapers are blown to smithereens Ñ cannot be compared to those trying to stop them.

As the saying goes, ÒFirst they came for the Saturday people, and then they came for the Sunday people ÉÓ I pray it is not too late to stop them.

Ñ Gail Rubin is a founding member of the Davis Interfaith Coalition for Peace and Justice in the Middle East, http://www.pjme.org. This column will be published every other month.