Letters addressed to God in Jerusalem. photo released by the Israel Government Press Office on September 21, 2016. (Government Press Office via AP)
Howard Epstein – LETTER FROM ISRAEL – ALL POLICY IS FOREIGN POLICY
In the Second Intifada, between September 2000 and 2005, families parted every morning, not knowing whether they would still be intact by the evening. A 2007 study of the “Uprising” attacks found that 40% were carried out by Hamas, 26% by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, 26% by Fatah and the rest by assorted terrorist groups. So that’s fully two-thirds by Hamas and PIJ, who fired nearly 5,000 missiles into Israel last month from their autonomous Gaza Strip. Most of the Israeli casualties were caused by suicide bombings, but there were other methods of attack including planted bombs, shootings, stonings, stabbings, lynchings and rockets. 1,137 Israelis were killed, of whom 887 (78%) were civilians.
Two not so obvious but significant casualties of the Second Intifada were the Peace Now movement and Israeli politics, which were simply blasted sharply to the right. That’s one reason why King Bibi is proving so hard to shift. His hard-core support remembers the Second Intifada in the gut, even if they do not recall the details cerebrally. When I wrote last week that Netanyahu might yet erupt like Glen Close from the bath at the end of Fatal Attraction, I was hoping I was indulging in hyperbole. Now, I fear that the final scene of the current politico-drama might be something like that unforgettable scene in Alien: the chestbuster erupting from the Israeli body politic, condemning the spaceship’s crew to …. A Fifth Election!
With all the inescapable drama of Israeli politics as normal, why is it all policy foreign policy? The answer is blowing in the nuclear wind with which Israel is threatened should Iran ever achieve atomic breakout. My personal comfort blanket is my belief that the Mullahs will fight to the last drop of Lebanese, Gazan, Iraqi and Yemeni blood – but not their own. Like Nasrallah, who succeeded to the number one position in Hezbollah upon the assassination of his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, and would rather spend a generation in an underground bunker than take in the sea breezes of Beirut, the Mullahs will not want to dish it out given they are guaranteed, by Israel’s multi-level second-strike capability, that Tehran would be turned into a cake of rare earth minerals.
With all this going on, you have to research an Israeli newspaper, rather than casually read it, to find much in the way of the domestic matters that concern other nations. Nevertheless, to take your mind off things, I persevered and present for your edification and delight, from the allegedly apartheid nation, as it tries to acquire a government with not one but two elected Arab Members of the Knesset, a small selection from the “in other news” sections of the press.
The Philippines, some 9,000 kms distant from Israel, has a population of 108 million people. You might think that it would be able to find work for its people closer to home, but some 31,000 Filipinos, many of them graduates, provide gentle, infinitely patient, approaching end-of-life care to Israeli seniors. They are mostly treated like family members and send money home every month to their families, but it is unlikely that any of them are super-remunerated. Now Israel has found a way to repay their indulgence. Later this month, a health delegation of three experts will arrive in Manila to advise on a vaccination process that would slow, and hopefully eradicate, the curse of the pandemic – as in Israel.
This may remind you of the devastating Haitian earthquake when Israeli rescue and medical teams reached the Caribbean island before the USA had discovered where Haiti was situated. Indeed, from the Ionian Islands, Greece (in 1953) to Albania (2019) this has become habit-forming. I lost count but you can check out the number of times Israel has performed miracles far from home at:
https://www.idf.il/en/minisites/humanitarian-missions/the-idf-s-humanitarian-aid-through-the-years/
Then again, the much-reviled Jewish State continues to improve the lot of mankind, irrespective of race, colour or creed. It was reported this week that Tel Aviv University researchers have developed a method to fight bacteria resistant to antibiotics, with a process by which “good” bacteria attack the systems of “bad” bacteria. The resistance of bacteria to antibiotics is a massive challenge worldwide and the chances are that Israel is on the road to a solution, following in the footsteps of Chaim Weizmann, one of the world’s first biochemists, whose patented method of accelerating chemical processes brought penicillin to so many in WWII.
In the same week, we see that the US medical sector regulator, the FDA, has approved for use Biogen Israel’s Alzheimer’s drug. The initial obvious market consists of around 1.5 million Americans, which will not do Israeli fiscal stability any harm whatsoever. Given that Israeli foreign currency reserves are just about the highest per capita globally, the economy powers on, government or no government.
So, you get the picture. Israeli news is not all gloom and doom. First, we made the desert bloom and now we’re making it boom.
© June 2021 Howard Epstein
Howard Epstein’s new play, The Trial of David Ben Gurion, will have its world premiere on Zoom on the evening of Monday, 21 June 2021, the 73rd anniversary of the Altalena tragedy, which is at the centre of the play. (Log-in details next week.)
