This morning, USAID announced that Israel is its newest partner in the "Power Africa" program meant to provide electricity for the African continent.
At the ceremony marking the occasion (video), which was little reported, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke. It is worth reading because these are the stories that do not make it into the media.
Here's what he said:
It's a pleasure to be with all of you this morning, literally and figuratively. This is bringing light, and every time that an African mother will turn on the light or turn on a heater for some water for her children part of Israel will be there.
It's a great, great development and it comports with a vision that I have which is to have Israel come back to Africa and have Africa come back to Israel. It was a wonderful partnership in the' 60s, derailed, now back on track and full force. This locomotive is going very fast. In the last 18 months I have been three times to Africa I have to tell my African friends that it you know it's been three days since I saw African diplomats and I'm getting giddy. This is something that is born about not merely by the friendship of governments.
You know we we conduct polls on the Internet. It's quite startling. We conduct polls and we asked in 54 countries in all the continents, "So, what do you think of Israel? Do you think it has values? Is it an asset you think your countries will benefit from contacts with Israel?"
So we get startling results that reflect the change in Israel's international position because of our technological prowess in bettering the lives of people in so many areas. Energy is one of them, but water, agriculture, IT security, all the elements that are important for the in maintenance and development of a good life, a good safe life. We see that countries around the world, that governments appreciate it. But what we found in this poll is that the people appreciated us. Guess where we got the highest marks now? David don't be offended, the US is way up there, but guess who's at the top? The people of Africa! They recognize the benefit of partnering with Israel and that's a tremendous development. It means that what we're doing, what we're developing here is a partnership not only of governments but of peoples, and what the people understand is that cooperation with Israel just as it helped agriculture in Africa in the '60s [we] can now help every realm of life in the beginning of the 21st century. It's a remarkably positive development.
We're going to continue this step after step after step. We believe in Africa. I believe in Africa. I believe in the partnership with Africa and what better partnership can we have than having USAID, the US government, Israel and the African countries working together to
secure a better future.
The the most important thing is to be to the point, and you know that Hebrew is a very compact language. When you translate Hebrew into English it's about a third longer. So in the beginning of the Bible there are two words in Hebrew; okay it takes four words to say it in English, but I'll say and it summarizes everything that we're doing here: "Let there be light."