Corona Days in Israel (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

 

Recently the European Union announced that it would reopen its borders to visitors from some other countries. Israel was not on the list (neither was the US). Many Israelis reacted indignantly, but objectively our Coronavirus situation is not good.

On June 30, Israel marked the highest number of new cases of Coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic, with 803 reported. After succeeding to extinguish the first wave with an economy-crushing lockdown, the re-opening was marred by some strategic mistakes, for which we are beginning to pay the price. Here is a graph of new cases per day:

 

Although there has been a recent increase in the daily number of tests done, a Health Ministry employee said on 16 June that “the proportion of positive tests was higher than before,” and therefore the increase in reported new cases was indicative of a new wave of infection.

I don’t pretend to be an expert, but some of the reasons were obvious. In the educational system: it was necessary to reopen the schools, because Israelis have a lot of children, and it’s very difficult to get people back to work when there’s no solution for child care. The usual safety valve for parents, retired grandparents, was not available due to the danger to them from the disease. The first mistake was to open all grades almost at once. It would have been possible to open the lower grades first, which would have freed the parents to work, while reducing the risk. What followed was a sharp spike in the 10-19 year age group and a smaller one in the 0-9 group at the start of the second wave in early June.

The Education Ministry devised a plan that would separate students and teachers in the schools into “capsules” which would be isolated from one another, students would sit 2 meters apart, masks would be required for students and teachers, and so on. The second mistake was not following the plan. I am not sure if it proved unworkable, or if teachers and administrators didn’t take it seriously enough, as some said. But in many schools, compliance was lax. Schools in which cases of Corona occurred were closed, but the damage was done.

Coronavirus transmission is believed to be primarily by droplets released when an infected person sneezes, coughs, talks, or sings. These droplets may remain in the air for a few minutes. It is also thought that the more viral particles a person ingests, the more likely they are to become sick, although it is not clear if this affects the severity of the illness. Transmission outdoors where droplets may be blown away or dehydrated by breezes and diluted in a larger volume of air, is much less likely than in a confined indoor space. Masks may not be fine enough to prevent viral particles from passing through, but they do greatly impede the much larger droplets; they are useful both when worn by the person who is infected and by others nearby. There is also the possibility of droplets impinging on a person’s eyes, so a face shield is useful in addition to a mask.

Israelis love “life cycle events” like circumcisions, bar mitzvahs, weddings, and so forth. Big weddings are the rule, often held in large event halls. There are even websites that help you decide how much money to give according to the type of event, your relationship to the principals, and so on. These events are often held indoors, and the Health Ministry allowed event halls to reopen when the first wave subsided. There are guidelines on the number of people allowed at an event, but they were liberal. Religious services, which were initially sharply restricted, were reopened with more relaxed guidelines. These actions may have been premature, and some restrictions have been re-imposed.

What everyone wants to do is to find ways to protect the population without destroying the economy. The best way to do that (at least, until a vaccine or effective treatment is developed) is to identify each and every sick person and isolate them before they can infect others. This requires a) the ability to do enough tests, b) a rapid turnaround of test results so that it is possible to identify someone as a carrier of the disease before they can infect others, and c) trained people to investigate the sources of infection so that those exposed can be tested.
While the number of tests has been increasing, the turnaround time has been poor. In the early part of the second wave, when many cases were detected in schools, the labs were unable to keep up with the tests. As far as investigations are concerned the Health Ministry reports a serious shortage of personnel trained to do this; and it has been accused of poor management as well. They have just hired several hundred medical students and paramedics for this function; it’s mysterious why this took so long.

The public, which was relatively disciplined during the first wave, seems to have decided that “the Corona is over,” and that masks are best worn around the chin, to be moved up when a police officer, who might give them a ticket worth 500 Shekels ($146), is nearby. The latest news is that specific cities and neighborhoods will be placed on lockdown in order to try to break the chain of infection.

PM Netanyahu got good marks for his handling of the crisis during the first wave, when he made good decisions such as closing the country’s borders quickly. The removal of restrictions, however, has not been handled so well. Employment has not snapped back – unemployment stands at near 21% – and the epidemic has moved into a second wave, which could be as bad or worse than the first one. Some industries, like tourism and performing arts, have been devastated and little has been done to help them. Of course, everything isn’t his responsibility, but he is known for micromanaging what he believes are areas of importance, and many Israelis feel that he doesn’t believe that they are of importance.

It isn’t helping that after the scandal of the obscenely bloated unity government of 36 ministers and 9 deputy ministers, and after the unity negotiations produced unprecedented perks for the Prime Minister and his alternate, Bibi got the Knesset to pass legislation to exempt him from taxes on work done on his private residence by the government. He did not improve his image when he remarked that although he deserved the tax break, his “timing was wrong.” No kidding.

***

Israel’s approach to the Corona has been very – Israeli. First, we tried to overcome it by brute force. Then we became overconfident. And now, hopefully, we’ll try to be smart.

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It will be OK (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

Israelis are sometimes criticized for saying “yehiye b’seder” [it will be OK] without sufficiently considering the consequences. But there is such a thing as decision paralysis, when you can’t act because you never feel that you have enough information. Sometimes that’s worse than a less-than-perfect decision. I think the opponents of Israel’s application of civilian law to parts of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley are trying hard to induce decision paralysis.

Today (Wednesday) there is supposed to be a meeting in the White House at which Trump Administration officials reportedly will decide whether to green-light the move. Of course it will be a good thing if the US recognizes Israel’s action, especially if that means that it will issue an official statement that Jewish communities outside the Green Line are part of Israel.

But on the other hand, there is a feeling that the US is trying to micromanage Israel’s behavior. Perhaps, it is suggested, the “green light” will only include several communities near Jerusalem. Or maybe a phase-in that will take several months. Or maybe the US will require Benny Gantz’ explicit agreement. Or – who knows?

Gantz, incidentally, is remarkably unclear about his position, if he indeed has one. Here is how Noa Landau, a left-leaning journalist for Ha’aretz, describes it:

Not unilaterally, yes unilaterally. Only with the international community’s (unobtainable) consent, only with Jordan’s (unobtainable) consent. Only the Jordan Valley, only the settlement blocs. Only as part of the broader Trump plan, only a limited symbolic step. Only with a gesture to the Palestinians – but who needs the Palestinians anyway? Just don’t ask us to elaborate.

There is great pressure being applied from many quarters, both against PM Netanyahu and against Trump, to oppose this step, which is almost universally referred to as “annexation of [part of] the ‘West Bank’”. As Eugene Kontorovich argues [$], it is not “annexation” because the territory in question

…isn’t legally the territory of any other state, nor has it been since Israel’s independence in 1948. Neither the U.S. nor the European Union recognizes the existence of a Palestinian state, and Israel’s sovereign claim to the territory is superior to any other country’s. Putting this move in the same category as Russia’s seizure of Crimea is entirely misleading.

The Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) in the US is asking its members to lobby Congress against the plan, “out of a concern for Israel’s safety and security, for the preservation of Israel’s democratic character, and for the place of Israel among the nations of the world.” Its talking points come directly from the Israeli Left, which has been consistently defeated at the polls since the disasters wrought by the government of Ehud Barak in 2000. But don’t liberal American Jews know better than Israeli voters?

The Obama Gang has weighed in as well. Here’s Gangster Susan Rice: “So when it comes to annexation, I think the obvious argument against it is that it all but makes that objective of a two-state outcome impossible…”

What she means, of course, is that it makes impossible the Gang’s version of a two-state solution, in which Israel, including Jerusalem, is divided along the 1949 armistice lines. But that was always so, because it would render Israel indefensible, precisely the opposite of their contention. The Gang also envisioned the expulsion of tens of thousands of Jews from the territory in order to make a Jew-free Palestine possible, and Israel giving up control of Judaism’s holy places – which worked so well [not] under the Jordanians.

But a demilitarized Palestinian autonomy in less than all of the territory is far less dangerous. It does not require expelling Jews (or Arabs), and very few Palestinians are incorporated into Israel. That’s the Trump Administration version of the two-state solution.

Opponents of the move worry a great deal about the response of the Arab countries, especially Jordan, and the Europeans. I must note that if I have misgivings about the US micromanaging Israeli policy, I am even less likely to be influenced by the public pronouncements of Arab leaders who have been pumping anti-Israel venom into the veins of their subjects for decades, and now – when they depend on us for their security – are afraid that they will be overthrown if they don’t show sufficient enmity toward us. Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states all know who will help them when they are in trouble, and who wants to hurt them.

The intersectional Left is fond of asking people to “check [their] privilege.” To the Europeans, I say “check your history,” you who practiced viciously exploitative colonialism for hundreds of years, who started world wars, and who either participated in the genocide of the European Jews, prevented their escape (Britain, I am looking at you), or turned a blind eye. It hasn’t been long enough to give any weight to your moral pronouncements.

Returning to President Trump, I think that moving this deal forward is of great importance to him, to show both his allies in the Middle East and his pro-Israel domestic supporters that he keeps his promises. The fact that his political enemies are mobilizing against him in force – particularly the Obama Gang – shows the importance of this issue. This gives Israel some leverage, which should be applied to keep the initiative from being watered down. We don’t have to agree on anything other than the map, and certainly not to a sovereign Palestinian state.
I think time is very short. The American election campaign will soon begin to absorb all the energies of the administration. Any gradual phase-in of sovereignty will not survive a change of administration, if it should occur. I am convinced that if Mr. Biden is elected, his administration will be dominated by the Obama Gang, which has proven itself an enemy of the Jewish state.
A Biden Administration could reverse an American position established by Trump – as Obama did with respect the Bush-Sharon letters – but it can’t undo Israeli decisions, which can and should be translated into facts on the ground.

It’s imperative that Israel move ahead and extend civilian law to communities in Judea and Samaria and to the Jordan Valley, in July as planned. If the map that will delineate the lines isn’t complete, it should be completed, unilaterally if necessary. I don’t see Trump objecting to unilateral action. Why should he? The details, essential to us, are unimportant to him.
There’s one week left in June. If not now, when?

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Obama’s Last Minute Plot Against Israel (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen. – Woody Guthrie

On 23 December 2016, lame-duck President Barack Obama struck back at Israel for her insouciant refusal to acquiesce to the empowerment of her deadly enemy, Iran; and at the same time at least partly kept his promises to pro-Palestinian activists, who had been disappointed by what they saw as his insufficient firmness toward Israel.
On that day, the US abstained on a vote and allowed the UN Security Council to pass resolution 2334, which declared all “settlements” outside of the pre-1967 lines – including eastern Jerusalem – “illegal under international law,” and “call[ed] upon all States … to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967,” a provision which has been used to justify discriminatory labeling and boycotts of Jewish products from the territories. The resolution asserted that Israel was in violation of the 4^th Geneva Convention and demanded that she “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities…”
This was the first anti-settlement Security Council resolution that the US had not vetoed since the Carter Administration. It directly contradicts the position of the Israeli government, which views the territories as disputed, not occupied, and the Jewish communities there as entirely legal (see here and here).
While creating dangerous precedents (e.g., for the prosecution of Israeli officials in the International Criminal Court and for the justification of BDS activity), the resolution was passed under Chapter VI of the UN Charter and not Chapter VII, which would justify the application of economic sanctions or even military action against Israel.
Although the resolution was introduced by Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal and Venezuela (it was originally proposed by Egypt, but Israel persuaded the Egyptians to withdraw it), a spokesman for PM Netanyahu said that Israel received “ironclad information” via Arab countries that “this was a deliberate push by the United States and in fact they helped create the resolution in the first place.” Netanyahu said that he had asked Russian President Putin to veto resolution 2334, but Putin (although Russia apparently did try to delay the vote) would not do so.
Recently, PM Netanyahu told the Israel Hayom newspaper that Obama had planned to go even further:

He and his staff began working on another UNSC resolution, which would have forced Israel to agree to a Palestinian state based on the 1948 borders. Israel's UN ambassador at the time, Danny Danon, sounded the alarm.

At the time, the US administration denied the Israeli claim that another resolution, in addition to UNSCR 2334, was going to be brought before the UN Security Council.

Did Bibi exaggerate? Hardly. A clue to the details of this second resolution was provided by a contemporaneous article by Nathan Thrall, who described, on the basis of interviews with “top US officials” what such a resolution might look like:

…to set down the guidelines or “parameters” of a peace agreement—on the four core issues of borders, security, refugees, and Jerusalem—in a US-supported UN Security Council resolution. Once passed, with US support, these Security Council-endorsed parameters would become international law, binding, in theory, on all future presidents and peace brokers.

Top US officials see a parameters resolution as Obama’s only chance at a lasting, positive legacy, one that history might even one day show to have been more important to peace than the achievements of his predecessors.

As we know, Obama’s position on borders was that permanent ones had to be “based on” the 1949 armistice lines, with only small swaps to accommodate some settlement blocs, requiring that the Palestinians be compensated for the swaps with land from the pre-1967 state of Israel. In contrast to the Israeli view that Israel held title to the territories (although she would consider ceding some of the area in return for a peace agreement), Obama saw all of the land across the Green Line as “occupied Palestinian territories.”
Any agreement that would result in Israel losing control of the Jordan Valley and the high ground of Judea and Samaria would render the country indefensible. Israel cannot afford to allow those borders to be imposed under any circumstances.
Obama’s view was at odds with the 1949 armistice agreement as well as UNSC 242, the grandmother of all UNSC resolutions concerning the Israeli-Arab conflict, and the Oslo Accords. The armistice agreements clearly stated that the cease-fire lines simply represented the areas under control of the sides at the time of the cessation of hostilities, and that they had no political significance. UNSC 242 called for “secure and recognized boundaries” that would be arrived at by negotiation between the parties (at that time Israel and the Arab nations). Oslo replaced the Arab nations with the Palestinian Authority, but also made the question of borders a final status issue to be settled by negotiation.
Obama wished to upend all that and reward the Palestinians with the whole enchilada prior to negotiation. Whether such a resolution would indeed have “become [binding] international law” is not at all clear, but there is no doubt that it would be used as justification for continued pressure on Israel. If it had passed, it would have been used as an argument against the Trump plan, which is in essence a 2-state solution that is not based on the 1949 lines.
According to Netanyahu, when he heard about Obama’s intention, he called “his friend” Vladimir Putin, and convinced him that it was a bad idea. And Putin agreed to veto it if it came up. The Obama administration realized that this would be an embarrassment which would hurt the Democrats domestically without gaining anything, and so decided not to push it.
If Netanyahu’s story is true – and the Thrall article, which obviously represents Obama Administration thinking suggests strongly that it is – then what lessons can be drawn from it?
The main one is that Israel should beware of Obama and his gang, who have not gone away and will be very influential again if the Democrats win the coming election. We should think about this very carefully when considering when to apply Israeli law to the strategic Jordan Valley.
Another is that if indeed Putin intervened, it is evidence that Israel cannot afford to become a ward (or a satellite!) of one of the great powers. It must maintain friendly connections with all sides. A small country in the Middle East won’t survive otherwise.
And one more: Woody Guthrie was right. Not every enemy comes at you with a gun.

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Being an Ally Works Both Ways (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

In a recent column, Hen Mazzig takes some Jews to task for failing to support “Black Lives Matter.” Just because a few “fringe activists” have tried to inject the Palestinian issue into the justified cause of black people being disproportionately the targets of police violence, he thinks, is not a reason for us to become unsympathetic to it:

The black community in America needs and deserves our voice and support. We must not allow the few activists trying to turn this important cause into an anti-Israel campaign to succeed. The way to do this is simple. Our ancestors already did it. When he saw the injustice the black community faced, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. He put his life on the line for the cause, and in turn, King became an unapologetic advocate against anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Instead of worrying about minority groups turning against Jews, we should be asking how can we show we haven’t turned our backs on them.

Hen Mazzig doesn’t have to prove that he’s a Zionist who has dedicated himself to the Jewish people and the Jewish state. He is an effective voice, especially to young people. But I think he misses the mark here.

I feel compelled to say that BLM’s primary cause is just. I don’t know if proportionately more blacks are killed by law enforcement than whites, because there are persuasive statistical arguments made on both sides. But every black American that I’ve ever talked to about this – and they have been primarily well-educated, middle-class black people – can recount numerous anecdotes about harassment, humiliation, and fear at the hands of police officers.

I grew up in a lower middle-class white family which improved its status to middle-middle by the time I left. Only once in my life did I fear the police, and that was in 1970 when I participated in an antiwar demonstration, and the club-swinging Pittsburgh police tac squad charged the demonstrators. Much later, two of my own kids were stopped by police for “engaging in a speed contest” on a public street. The cop brought them home and was more worried that my wife would kill them than anything else. This is more or less the experience of most members of the white middle class. The black experience is different.

But these aren’t the days of Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel. These days visibly Jewish pedestrians in New York City are beaten for looking Jewish, primarily by blacks. And there aren’t just a few “fringe activists” that are responsible for adding the Palestinian issue to the mix of intersectional issues that all progressives are required to sign onto. Sure, the people who added accusations of Israeli apartheid and genocide to the BLM platform were anti-Israel activists, but who else would they pick to write that section of the document? The whole document was approved by the leadership. And for a long time, this view of Israel has been prevalent among the rank and file of the broader Left. It isn’t just BLM. Remember the “Occupy” movement?

The black Left is, if possible, even more extreme. Anti-Zionism became part of the Black Power movement of the late 1960s and 70s, as militants distinguished themselves from more moderate (and pro-Israel) leaders like King, seeing themselves as part of a worldwide revolutionary struggle against colonialism and imperialism. Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) was strongly anti-Zionist and considered Arab terrorism against what he called a “settler colony” justified. Huey Newton of the Black Panther Party met with Arafat in 1972, and wrote an essay “On the Middle East” in which he argued that Israel was an outpost of American imperialism that persecuted Palestinians. Angela Davis also met Arafat, has always taken the Palestinian side, and today supports BDS. Now we have Marc Lamont Hill and Cornel West, the “intellectual” voices of Israel-hatred. All this is added to the antisemitism that has been rife in the black community since the 60s, and which is fed by those like Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, Jeremiah Wright, and others.

As was famously said about a different group, the black Left “imbibed Jew-hatred with their mothers’ milk.” It’s not accidental that accusations of Israeli apartheid and genocide were included in the BLM platform; it is essential.

So how are we to respond? Mazzig thinks that we must support BLM despite its anti-Israel position:

Attacking Black Lives Matter only fuels anti-Semitism, making it easier to paint Jews as racists willing to reject the modern civil rights movement just to defend Israel.

“Just to defend Israel?” Did he actually write that? I would argue that a Jew is obligated to defend our homeland, and that takes priority over concern for other peoples. Even if it were necessary to “reject the modern civil rights movement” to do it, it would be so. But of course nobody is rejecting it. An overwhelming majority of Jews strongly oppose anti-black racism.

What we are rejecting – what we must reject – is the hijacking of every social justice cause on behalf of some of the least just people on the planet, the misogynist, homophobic, antidemocratic, terrorist-paying, murder-inciting, child-soldier-abusing, corrupt leaders of the PLO and Hamas. You’d think social justice activists would have noticed.

Worrying that our antisemitic enemies might call us “racists” is a symptom of severe Oslo Syndrome. Nothing is more Sisyphean than to try to obtain the approval of those who hate us for being Jewish by modifying our behavior. Indeed, the more abject our apologies, the more we kneel in recognition of our guilt over white and/or Jewish privilege, the more we will be held in contempt. It’s not what we do, it’s who we are that they have a problem with.

What we are required to do as Jews is to stand unequivocally against those that libel the Jewish state. It doesn’t matter how good the rest of their cause is, they deserve zero support from us if part of their program is the destruction of our homeland and the death or dispersal of its Jewish population. That is precisely what supporting BDS and the “liberation movements” in “Palestine” means.

The sight of Jews abasing themselves before a movement that wishes to return them to the time that there was no Jewish state is embarrassing, but more importantly, demonstrates that there is no downside to joining the anti-Israel parade.

“If you want to change Black Lives Matter Israel agenda, you need to show up for them,” says Mazzig. He has it backwards. If they want our help, they need to stop supporting those who want to kill us. We understand that American blacks have a legitimate problem with racism. They want “allies.” But being an ally works both ways.

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Timidity is no Virtue (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

You annex foreign land, not your own country. – Menachem Begin

Right now Israel is facing a momentous decision to do something that is practically nothing.
That is to extend Israeli civilian law to some parts of Judea and Samaria, specifically the Jordan Valley and other areas where Jewish communities are located.

Why do I say it is practically nothing? Because the official position of our government, although it often does a rotten job of explaining it, is that those areas are already part of Israel. Nothing is being “annexed” as the EU insists (here is why). And while the areas are currently governed by a military government, little will change in most practical legal matters.

Of course it is a big deal for the Palestinians, for the Europeans, and indeed for anyone who wishes that the Jews did not have a sovereign state. This is because it symbolizes the end of the pretense that was so dear to them, that the “West Bank” (as they prefer to call it) is not part of Israel and ultimately will need to pass into Arab hands. It means that any “two-state solution” that could happen in the future will happen according to a map more like the map found in the Trump Plan – one that is consistent with UNSC 242 that called for “secure and recognized boundaries” – rather than the very insecure boundaries that would result from basing them on the 1949 armistice lines, as previous US administrations wished to do.

It is also a big deal for us, for the same reason. It is a recognition that justice is on our side. It is a repudiation of the idea that we are holding onto something that belongs to someone else. It is an affirmation that Eretz Yisrael is the land of the Jewish people.

Let me dismiss the objection that the Palestinians will react violently. What else is new? The Palestinians will always be as violent as they think they can get away with. If they see that we’re prepared, they will content themselves with verbal complaints.

And King Abdullah of Jordan won’t abrogate his treaty with us. He can’t afford to, and in addition he probably would prefer not to have a border with any future Palestinian entity.

Most Israelis favor this step. But some have objected that the map in the Trump plan would leave numerous Jewish communities cut off, enclaves in the Palestinian entity without the ability to grow and difficult or impossible to secure. It would be, de facto, as much an abandonment of those communities as the withdrawal from Gaza was for Gush Katif. They also point out that any Palestinian state in the center of Israel’s heartland would be dangerous.

The US has said that it would “recognize” Israel’s action only if Israel offered to negotiate with the Palestinians on the basis of the Trump plan, coordinate the map with the US, and agree to freeze construction in parts of Area C that are not included in the area to which Israeli law will be applied. This implies that Israel would actually lose territory as a result.

I don’t want to minimize their concerns. But I think we need to step all the way out of the “peace processing” box and take a different approach. I propose that:

1. We announce that we agree in principle with the Trump plan, although we do not sign onto any specifics. We offer to talk with the Palestinians.
2. We draw a map that meets our security needs and provides for access to and expansion of all the existing Jewish communities.
3. We present it to the Americans and explain that this is our interpretation of the Trump plan, and we hope that they will be able to agree that it is reasonable.
4. We take the needed steps to extend civilian law to the areas indicated in the map.

Note that American “recognition” of Israel’s action is meaningless. We are not declaring a state that needs to be accepted into international organizations. We are making a change that is an internal matter, consistent with the principle that Judea and Samaria are part of Israel in accordance with international law.

I’m confident that the US will accept our action. It is not in its interest to reject it: whether the map is closer to what the American officials who originally drew it envisioned or to what the people who today live in Judea and Samaria prefer, the negative reactions from Europe and the Palestinians, as well as the (disingenuous) complaints of the Arab nations, will be the same. So why make the details a sticking point?

Keep in mind that the US has other concerns. It seems to me that the position of President Trump is precarious. I also believe – though I hope I’m wrong – that the disturbances that we are seeing now in cities across the country are not a short-term phenomenon but mark the beginning of a prolonged state of instability. And the Coronavirus is not going away.

We are an ally, not a vassal of the US. It may be that in the long run we may be able to do more for it than it can do for us.

Western Europe, with its history of colonialism, antisemitism, and genocide against the Jews and others, is not a moral exemplar; its politics are politics of interest larded with a large measure of Jew-hatred. At the same time that we extend civilian law in Judea and Samaria, we should take the strongest possible steps to eliminate EU influence there, as well as in various areas of Israeli politics and society.

We can and should take this step. Even though it is practically a very small step, it is psychologically and spiritually important. It may not be possible, even in a few months. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

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Israel’s Supreme Court Does it Again (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

In August of last year, Dvir Sorek, an 18-year old yeshiva student walking near Migdal Oz in the Gush Etzion region was set upon by two terrorists acting on behalf of Hamas. He was brutally stabbed to death (do I need to add “brutally” to “stabbed to death?”)
The murderers, and three others who helped plan and prepare the attack, were quickly located and arrested. Four of them immediately confessed. After they were indicted, the IDF informed the families of the four that their homes would be demolished. The families petitioned the Supreme Court to prevent the demolition, but the petitions were denied, and in November, the homes were demolished.
Home demolitions are controversial. But most observers believe that the policy is effective in restraining potential terrorists, even suicide terrorists. And some 90% of Jewish Israelis support the policy.
There were five terrorists involved in Sorek’s murder. Unlike the others, Mahmoud Atawna did not confess immediately, so the IDF did not order his home demolished at the same time as the others. Finally an order was issued to do so in January, 2020. This one, too, was appealed to the Supreme Court, with the assistance of “Hamoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual,” one of many left-wing Israeli NGOs funded by the hostile-to-Israel European Union, various European governments, and the US-based New Israel Fund. But this time, a three-judge panel ruled 2-1 in favor of the petitioners, and ordered that the IDF could not demolish the home.
The Court, which had never overthrown an IDF order to demolish the home of a convicted terrorist before, gave two reasons for it: Atawna’s wife and children lived in the house, and were not involved in the murder and didn’t support him (how they established the latter, I do not know – maybe they asked her). And second, too much time had passed after the murder for it to be a deterrent to terrorism:

Justices Anat Baron and Uzi Vogelman granted the petition against the planned demolition in Beit Kahil, near Hebron, leaving Justice David Mintz in the minority. …

Baron wrote that the army didn’t issue the demolition order until five months after the attack, after the homes of other members of the terror cell had been destroyed. “The longer the gap between the attack and the demolition of the home of the attacker, the less the deterrent effect inherent in the home demolition,” she wrote. “Lacking a deterrent effect, the inevitable impression is that the home demolition is being sought as a solely punitive measure.”

The decision also noted that Atawna’s family was not accused of involvement or having knowledge of his intent to harm a soldier and did not express support for the attack after the fact.

Baron also explained why she thought the deterrent effect was reduced by the delay:

The passage of time results in disconnecting the ‘consciousness connection’ between the murder and the sanction against it, so that already at the time the demolition order was issued its deterrent power was in doubt …

The decision noted that due to the delay in issuing the order “the petitioners were left in a cloud of uncertainty about the fate of their home.” It’s hard to resist commenting that the Sorek family also will find themselves in a cloud, only it will not be five months, it will be for the rest of their lives, whenever they remember the son that was so cruelly and pointlessly taken from them.
What is interesting is that the dissenting judge, David Mintz, noted that the reason for the delay in issuing the demolition order was that since there was no confession, the IDF waited for Atawna to be convicted before issuing it! In other words, they wanted to be as fair as possible.
Until now the Supreme Court has usually avoided interfering with the IDF. But with this decision, the justices, who apparently believe that they are experts in the psychology of terrorists (“disconnecting the consciousness connection” – it sounds better in Hebrew but makes no more sense), and who base legal decisions on what feels right to them, have decided to second-guess the IDF as well.
Incidentally, I’m not an expert in psychology of terrorists either, but it seems to me that the certainty that it will occur is more important to the deterrent power of a home demolition than how long it takes to execute. And with this order, the Court has just demolished that certainty – and eviscerated yet another sanction against terrorism.

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The Manufactured Outrage over “Annexation” (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

Annexation. The word is spat out with such vitriol that one would think that what is contemplated is mass murder. From Mahmoud Abbas to Jordan’s King Abdullah, to the European Union, to Justin Trudeau, the condemnations, warnings, and threats continue to flow. And of course, Joe Biden had his say.

A few words about the reality behind the so-called “annexation.” To start with, nothing is being annexed. It is the reasonable position of the Israeli government that it is sovereign in Judea and Samaria according to international law; and you can’t annex something that already belongs to you. But wait, you say, virtually the entire world disagrees, as is pointed out ad nauseum by sources like the BBC and the NY Times. Unhappily for them and the Palestinians they empathize with, international law is neither a popularity contest nor subject to a majority vote in the UN General Assembly. It is quite possible that the Government of Israel is right and “virtually the entire world” is wrong. This isn’t an article about that, but if you are interested, here is a good one.

The government calls it “extension of Israeli civil law,” and that is because presently those parts of Judea and Samaria that are not under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) are subject to a military government (this is the case whether residents are Israelis or Palestinians).
Those who are so up in arms about the proposal also like to say that “Israel plans to annex the West Bank.” The correct formulation is that Israel proposes to extend its civil law to certain parts of Judea and Samaria where Jewish communities exist, and to most of the Jordan Valley, with the exception of Jericho, with its large Arab population. It’s important to note that almost no Arabs live in the areas in question. Those that do will be offered full Israeli citizenship, just like the Arabs of Jerusalem – or Haifa, or Yafo.

The Jordan Valley has always been considered an area that must be under Israeli control in any permanent establishment of borders, because it is essential to Israel’s defense. No “two-state solution” that did not recognize this would ever be accepted by Israel. And neither would one which included the ethnic cleansing of Jews and the destruction of their communities in Judea and Samaria.

The furor over “annexation” is an excuse to attack Israel and the Trump plan, which is the first real breakthrough in diplomatic efforts to end the conflict since the unfortunate Oslo Accords institutionalized it.

The Palestinians have adopted a paradigm of the conflict in which Israel is entirely at fault. Justice, they say, requires that we vacate “their” land – in fact, if you asked them, they would say that this includes everything from the river to the sea; they believe they are being generous by just asking for Judea and Samaria (at least, for now). But this paradigm is wrong. In fact, we are the ones who have been excessively generous in repeatedly offering them large parts of the land, offers that were rejected because they did not provide a clear enough path to an Arab state in all of the land.

Mahmoud Abbas says that he wants a “two-state solution,” and “annexation” would make that impossible. But Abbas has always understood “two-state solution” to mean a virtually complete withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, including the expulsion of all Israelis from those areas. He also envisions the realization of a right of return (a made-up concept that doesn’t appear in international law) for the millions of descendants of the Arab refugees of 1948. He does not accept that even the portion of Israel that would remain in Jewish hands after such a “solution” would be a “Jewish state” or “the state of the Jewish people;” indeed, he has said several times that there is no Jewish people. Therefore, it isn’t inaccurate to describe Abbas’ two states as one exclusively Arab state and one multiethnic state that would soon have an Arab majority.
There is little likelihood that the Palestinians will abandon their paradigm and their concomitant demands, and none at all as long as they are led by the PLO and Hamas.

The Trump plan, which is the framework under which Israel is acting today, recognizes that the traditional two-state idea is a non-starter, which is why countless rounds of negotiation have failed. Therefore it does not require Palestinian agreement before starting the process that is intended to lead to permanent, recognized borders for Israel, and autonomy (although not full sovereign statehood) for the Palestinians. This is unacceptable to the Palestinians just because it makes it impossible for them to realize their actual goals, spoken only in Arabic, of replacing Israel with an Arab state.

The European Union and Obama Administration officials accepted the Palestinian paradigm, although – at least for public consumption – they also said that they supported Israel’s security and right to exist. Thus they constantly reiterate as a mantra “two-state solution.” This position is self-contradictory.

Joe Biden, who wants to be President of the US, also favors a “two-state solution” and opposes “annexation.” He must: to do otherwise would lose the left wing of the Democratic base, as well as put him on the same side as his opponent. I don’t know how he feels personally about there being a Jewish state, if he has ever asked himself this question, or indeed if he has any actual ideas beyond wanting to be President. But I do know that he lent himself to the Obama Administration’s attempts to pressure Israel.

Back in May of 2010, while Biden was visiting Israel – Obama himself chose to avoid Israel until his second term, traveling to some 33 countries before then – the EU-funded Peace Now organization in Israel reported to the Americans that a regional committee had taken a preliminary step to add 200 more housing units to an existing plan to build apartments for religious Jews in Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood in Jerusalem that was outside of the Green Line. A total of about 1600 apartments were included in the plan.

Biden harshly condemned the announcement, but insisted that “There is no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security.” However, after he returned to the US, the administration ramped up attacks on Israel, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton berated Netanyahu in angry 43-minute phone call in which she accused Israel of “insulting” the US and Biden personally, blamed Israel for preventing negotiations with the Palestinians, and demanded additional concessions to the Palestinians, including the release of terrorist prisoners, to “build confidence.”

Like today’s row over “annexation,” there was a manufactured outrage, an international pileup on Israel for its stubborn intransigence. The difference is that today the American President supports us, rather than leading the charge against us. Today it’s easy to forget 2010, when it seemed that the pressure from Washington for dangerous, even suicidal, concessions would never let up.

For what it’s worth, no new housing was built in Ramat Shlomo until 2018, when some 500 apartments were built. The promise of 1600 new units that so angered Biden and Obama in 2010 is only now being kept.

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Jews and Evangelicals: it’s Complicated (Vic Rosenthal)

 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

I have lived a large part of my life outside the Jewish bubble. I have known many Evangelical Christians, and some of them have been good friends. So I wasn’t surprised to hear about “God TV” and its attempt – which apparently did not succeed, although it came very close – to initiate a Hebrew language TV channel on HOT, Israel’s largest cable provider, that is an unabashed attempt to “broadcast the gospel of Jesus Christ – Yeshua the Messiah – in Israel on cable TV in the Hebrew language” (video here). The channel is called “Shelanu” [ours] to remind us that Jesus was one of us, a Jew – as if this is an argument for Jews to adopt Christianity!

Many Israelis and Jews are outraged by missionary activity aimed at us. From our point of view it is deeply insulting. How dare they try to subvert Judaism, especially considering the history of Christian (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) Jew hatred? Arguably, the very wellspring of all antisemitism is the response of non-Jews – leaders of the early Church, Mohammed, Martin Luther, the Inquisition, et al – to the stubborn refusal of Jews to replace their traditional beliefs and rituals with the “better” ones proposed by the various religious innovators. So naturally we vehemently reject modern-day attempts to convert us.

Jews are generally not judgmental toward those who practice other faiths (they specialize in criticizing other Jews). We do not go around telling Christians that they are practicing idolatry, nor do we attack Hindus for their polytheism. In modern times, most strains of Judaism do not engage in proselytizing. And so we have little patience when it is directed at us.

The legal discussion concerning whether the channel should be permitted will be interesting. Israel has freedom of religion, as indicated in the Declaration of Independence. The courts have upheld the right of free expression of religious beliefs, on the basis of the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. There are, however, laws forbidding anyone from providing material benefit to someone for changing their religion, and forbidding attempts to persuade a person under 18 to change religion. Tourists can be prevented from entering the country or even deported for missionary activity.

Religious programming on TV is permitted. Even, theoretically, proselytizing programming. But if it is determined that it may influence young people, then it may not be allowed.

In order to understand why Evangelical Christians – who are otherwise supportive of Israel and may be quite friendly with Jews as a people and as individuals – would do something that is guaranteed to anger Jews and damage their relationship with them we need to look at some of their beliefs.

There of course is no one “Evangelical Christianity.” But Evangelicals generally believe that salvation requires an act of “conversion” or acceptance of Jesus as one’s savior and a renunciation of sin. The sometimes sudden life-changing experience is what some call being “born again.” Unlike Judaism, which requires above all observance of mitzvot [commandments], Evangelicals emphasize a radically powerful belief, which completely changes a person’s relationship to this world as well as his future in the world to come.

Along with the personal aspect of belief is the universal aspect, by which Evangelicals believe that one of their most important personal tasks, indeed one of the morally best things that they can do, is to bring others to the realization of the “good news.” If someone is resistant to the message, it can only be that they simply don’t understand what the stakes are; they don’t know what they are missing in this life, nor what will happen to them when they die, if they don’t accept Jesus while they still can.

Evangelicals believe that the Bible, including the Jewish Tanach, is the Word of God, either literally or by divine inspiration; and they study it carefully for guidance in all matters. Many Evangelicals are much more familiar with the Tanach than Jews, even Jews that have had Jewish educations. This naturally leads them to believe in the spiritual importance of the Jewish people. Often they quote biblical passages as the justification for their support and even love of Israel and the Jewish people. And how better to show your love for someone than to try to give them a better life, and save them from a horrible, eternally painful, doom?

It’s often said that Evangelical support for Israel, as well as their desire to convert Jews, is based on a belief in certain prophecies about the “End Times,” and they are acting in ways that will bring it closer. Some may believe this, but most of those who do accept such prophecies believe that the great upheavals and mass conversions that will mark the End Times are predestined, and not affected by human actions.

I think it should be clear that trying to explain to Evangelicals that it is inappropriate to proselytize among Jews will not be successful. Sharing and spreading their faith is a fundamental part of that faith itself; we can no more get them to renounce it then a Christian could get us to accept the Trinitarian nature of God.

At the same time, Jews have a right not to be bombarded with attempts to persuade them to abandon their own faith (I know Christian missionaries say they are just adding something to it, but that is disingenuous). The people behind the Shelanu TV channel are guilty of what popular psychology calls “bad boundaries.” One of the reasons for the existence of a Jewish state is to provide a place in which we can fully realize the Jewish dimension of our personal identity, something that is difficult or impossible in the diaspora. Part of the problem is the continuous pressure, even coercion, by the majority population, to give up our spiritual uniqueness. Missionary activity reintroduces that pressure. And the fact that it happens here in our own country diminishes our sovereignty.

Although it is important to protect the rights to freedom of expression and religion, no rights can be absolute, because of conflicts among them. Here in the Jewish state, unlike in the diaspora, there are special rights, or privileges, or benefits, for Jews and Judaism. We’ve tried to express some of this “specialness” in the controversial Basic Law: Israel – the Nation-State of the Jewish People.

So I think that if it becomes necessary to limit some of the rights exercised by those who love us so much that they find it acceptable to trespass on our boundaries, we might look to this law as a justification for that limitation.

That’s a job for the lawyers and judges. Meanwhile – and I really mean this – with the utmost respect for my Evangelical friends and strong supporters of Israel, I would like to see “God TV” out of the Jewish state.

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Mourning for Terrorists (Vic Rosenthal)

 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

In Israel, Memorial Day (yom hazikaron) is the day before Independence Day (yom ha’atzmaut). It makes sense: you can’t think about the miracle of our Jewish state without remembering the 23,816 soldiers, police, and other security people who lost their lives so we could get it and keep it, or the 4,166 civilians who were murdered by terrorists who want to take it from us.

Israel is a small country. An equivalent number, adjusted for population, would be over 1 million Americans. Every Israeli knows someone who has lost at least one family member to war or terror.

When I cook or putter in my little workshop, I listen to the radio, to reshet bet, the news and talk channel of Israel’s public broadcast corporation. My favorite radio personality is a guy called Yigal Guetta. Guetta was born in the northern development town of Kiryat Shmona in 1966 to a family that immigrated to Israel from Morocco. He wears a black kipa and served in the Knesset on behalf of the Sephardic Haredi Shas party in 2016-7, but was forced to resign by his party after he revealed in an interview that he had attended the gay wedding of his nephew. He didn’t dispute the rabbis who demanded that he quit. He was and is a traditionally observant Jew. But family is family. Some years before that he was fired from a job as CEO of a small city when he accused the mayor of corruption. Like me, he likes to cook and sometimes describes traditional Moroccan recipes on the air. This is who he is.

But yesterday, I learned something about him that I did not know. He talked about one day when he was 8 years old, April 11, 1974. That was when Palestinian Arab terrorists (PFLP-GC) infiltrated Kiryat Shmona from Lebanon, and murdered 18 people, including 8 children. The terrorists first entered a school building, but it was closed for the Passover holiday. Then they moved on to a residential building, shooting everyone they saw and throwing grenades. The army was late to arrive, and Guetta’s brother and sister-in-law were among the victims.

He described how his parents were never the same after that. I can’t come close to imagining how it was for them.

You would think things would have changed since 1974, but because of our failure to take a consistently severe stand against our enemies – in Jabotinksy’s phrase, our failure to build an “iron wall” – Palestinian Arab terrorism continues. Just yesterday, maybe while Yigal Guetta was describing 1974’s events in Kiryat Shmona, a 62-year old woman was stabbed seven times, in the street in Kfar Saba. Fortunately she will recover, but less fortunately the terrorist, who was shot by a civilian security guard, will also live. Israelis all know the drill – he will get the best medical care available in the Middle East, spend a few years in probably the most comfortable prison regime in the world outside of the Scandinavian countries, and receive a handsome salary from the PA, funded by generous donations from the EU.

Terrorism won’t end until Israel finds the gumption to eradicate the Palestinian Authority that sponsors, funds, and promotes it. Indeed, the PA’s official media recently praised the terrorists that killed Guetta’s relatives as “martyrs” and “heroes.”

But you haven’t heard the worst part. The psychopathological post-Zionist contingent in Israel, combined with various American leftist groups and supported by the New Israel Fund, holds an annual“Alternative Yom haZikaron ceremony” which “mourns the loss of all those who fell in the context of the conflict – both Israelis and Palestinians.”

Do you understand? The PFLP-GC terrorists, the great “martyrs” and “heroes” of the Palestinian movement, who murdered 18 people in cold blood, including 8 children, including Yigal Guetta’s brother and sister-in-law, are mourned by some of their Jewish targets.

And not only them. The terrorist that exploded his bomb in the Sbarro Pizza restaurant in 2001, killing 15, including 7 children. The ones that hijacked the bus on Israel’s coastal highway in 1978, and killed 38, including 13 children. These Jews pray for them.

I simply cannot wrap my mind around this. I cannot understand why an Israeli Jew or indeed any Jew would mourn for those who met their ends when they murdered or attempted to murder us. Do Americans hold ceremonies to mourn the 9/11 terrorists? Do Russians cry for Hitler? The only word that adequately describes this is “insanity.”

It isn’t surprising that extremist anti-Israel groups like If Not Now and J Street would participate in this lunacy. But the largest Jewish organization in North America, the Union for Reform Judaism, is one of the event’s cosponsors. They even retweeted an announcement by the organizers of this event, and added their own words, asking people to “… Join us and thousands of others from all over the world as we join together in peace.”

One of the feelings invoked in me by yom ha’atzmaut is that the re-establishment and survival of a sovereign Jewish state in our historic homeland is a highly unique and remarkable event. If I were a religious person, I would say it is miraculous. Surely it was accomplished at great cost, and it continues to exact a cost in blood. We owe so much to the families who have lost their sons and daughters in the struggle against an implacable enemy, that to mourn the very ones that ripped the hearts out of those families is an obscenity.

The long struggle has been too much for some of us, and there are those who have descended into a syndrome of madness, who choose to draw close to their murderers by adopting their point of view. They hope, perhaps, that by sacrificing their own people they will purify themselves from the evil they have come to believe is inherent in their nation-state, and if truth be told, in themselves as Jews.

By forcing themselves to empathize with those who are capable of shooting Jewish children, they believe that they will be better humans, and therefore find a way to communicate with the Other so as to bring peace.

But at the end of the day, this strategy always fails; and they find themselves estranged from their people, while still despised by their enemies.

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My Tuesday Morning (Vic Rosenthal)

 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

We found a chair on Tuesday morning. In Israel, unlike the USA, most people don’t have garages, basements, or attics to fill up with junk. When something is no longer useful to them, they often put it out on the street. And so we came upon a dining room chair, sound in frame but spattered with paint and with a damaged seat. We took it home, and I easily removed the paint spatters. Then I took off the seat and began the process of removing the countless staples that held the ruined vinyl cover on it. Whoever had put it together had been generous with staples, and they were driven into a chunk of that repulsive, hard particle board that seems to have replaced wood everywhere in recent years.

As I pried them out one at a time with an old screwdriver and pliers, I listened to the radio. A woman was describing her time in the hands of the Nazis. She was six years old at the time, and she remembered every horrifying detail. She talked very fast, but there were many details. She remembered everything, she said. Wasn’t it hard to carry all that around for so long, the radio host asked? That’s why I am telling you, dear, she said.

My wife came in to say that it was yom hashoah, as if I didn’t already know, and there was going to be a siren in a couple of minutes. I put down my pliers and we went out on our roof – one of my favorite things about this apartment is that it is on the top floor and we have a piece of roof for my wife’s plants and my antennas – as is our custom, and stood waiting for the siren.

The building is moderately tall, and when the sirens come on you can hear not only our own, which is located a few blocks away at the Magen David Adom compound, but others throughout the city, and maybe even as far away as Nes Tziona. First we hear our loud one, and then the sound arrives from sirens successively farther away, each one slightly weaker than its predecessor. The sirens sound continuously, rather than the rising and falling that warns of a rocket attack, which is the scariest sound you will ever hear.

We stood silently for two minutes, nothing moving in the street, and I could see someone standing still on their balcony in a building a few blocks away. As the sirens wound down, first ours, then the successively more distant ones, I imagined that I could hear hundreds of them from all over the Jewish state, and I thought that there were hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, all standing at attention to honor that woman who spoke on the radio, the rapidly dwindling group of survivors, and the memory of those who fought for their lives in the Warsaw Ghetto and even in the shadow of the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sobibor. And of course all those who didn’t survive.

From the roof I could see a small part of our Jewish state, roads, the green spot of the Hebrew University agricultural campus, a few tall buildings of the Weizmann institute. I am not sure exactly why, but I choked up, I couldn’t speak and I just hugged my wife, who is the emotionally tough one in our family.

Next week, the day before Independence Day will be another day of remembrance, this time for the soldiers, policemen, and terror victims lost in the struggle to preserve this beautiful Jewish state that makes me so proud to see. There will be two more sirens, and I will silently thank Hashem that my son, who spent nine years of his life in uniform, not including reserve duty, came home whole to his family.

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So that was my morning. And then I read an article in the Forward (motto: “Jewish. Fearless. Since 1897”) , a debate between two youngish American Jews on the subject “Is anti-Zionism antisemitic?” Is anti-Zionism antisemitic?  You are kidding me, right? Ask the woman who spoke on the radio.

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Lessons from the Pandemic (Vic Rosenthal)

 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

We went on a shopping expedition yesterday. Masked up, we walked to the supermarket and pharmacy and then returned home by way of the greengrocer. We made a special stop at a small market that was said to have eggs. There was a long line in front; but we got our eggs. Although I couldn’t tell for sure, I believe that these eggs were among those airlifted in from Portugal and Ukraine to meet the demand at Pesach time.

Israel still produces a lot of eggs, and this particular shortage was probably caused by hoarding by people who were afraid that the disruption caused by the coronavirus would prevent them from getting eggs for Pesach.

Eggs really aren’t a problem. We produce them, we can import them from multiple sources, and in the final analysis, we can live without them. Yes, even at Pesach, if we had to. In case you are wondering, there doesn’t appear to be a shortage of toilet paper, at least in Rehovot.

But what about other things? “Hi-tech” is supposedly the jewel in the crown of Israel’s economy, and semiconductors – microprocessors and countless types of simpler devices – are the building blocks of electronic devices. There are numerous semiconductor companies operating and headquartered in Israel, but – with the exception of Intel, which has manufacturing facilities for advanced microprocessors in Kiryat Gat – as far as I can tell, none of them actually make their products here. Chip designs created here are sent to “fabs” – fabricators – in East Asia, India, and elsewhere where they are manufactured. Other components that are necessary for building electronic devices are all manufactured elsewhere. Indeed, it is normal for a device to be designed in one country, assembled in another from parts made in still other countries, and then marketed worldwide.

Rice is apparently something that Israelis eat a lot of, but it is all imported. Israel exports irrigation systems that make it possible to grow rice with far less water than by traditional methods, but apparently we don’t use them at home. Ptitim, the tiny chunks of pasta that are so popular here, sometimes called “Israeli couscous” although they are not couscous, were developed by the Osem company as a rice substitute at the request of David Ben Gurion in the 1950s. During the first decade of Israel’s existence, not enough food was produced internally for all the immigrants – refugees from the Holocaust and Jews forced to leave Arab countries. In addition, there was little foreign currency available for imports like rice. Ptitim are cheap and easy to make.

There are numerous other products and raw materials that are essential to our daily lives or for our economy to function that must be imported. And we’ve developed complex systems that make this possible. But suppose these systems stopped functioning.

The coronavirus outbreak has made me think about this possibility. Suddenly we’ve noticed that things needed to respond to the epidemic, like protective equipment, diagnostic supplies, and ventilators, were not manufactured domestically. Drugs and ingredients for them come from overseas, often from only one country, usually China. Just-in-time manufacturing and inventory procedures mean that it’s difficult for the system to deal with a sudden spike in demand. Worldwide competition drives prices sky-high.

Israel made use of its Defense Ministry and even the Mossad spy agency to locate and procure urgently needed equipment. Defense facilities are now manufacturing ventilators locally. Thanks to this, and if current models are correct, Israeli doctors will not face the decisions their counterparts in northern Italy had to, in which they must choose which patient will get the ventilator that will allow him or her to live, while another is left to die. If we’re lucky.

But our highly leveraged technological civilization is not out of the woods yet. There is room for significant skepticism about the numbers of dead and sick coming from China. Economic and political instability there are not out of the question. In addition, some have predicted a deep worldwide economic depression caused by the pandemic and the lockdowns. If this comes about, and especially if it is accompanied by political instability – wars, revolutions, and the collapse of states – it could be enough to break some of the weak links in the chain that makes up the global economy. I could imagine widespread food insecurity in countries that until now have been considered highly developed.

Of course this could all be what my wife calls my “3 AM paranoia.” Maybe the coronavirus will quickly burn itself out, and economies around the world will recover quickly. Maybe the Chinese are telling the truth, or maybe they do have 21 million dead and it doesn’t matter. But whether or not this particular crisis is the straw that breaks the camel’s back, or if mankind wriggles out of this one only to be impaled upon the next (I love mixing metaphors), there are lessons to be learned for the people who make policy decisions for the nations of the world.

It is not possible for a nation the size of Israel to be self-sufficient in all things (although one like the US could be). But every nation should strive to be able to grow enough food to sustain its population. The trend toward agricultural monocultures is worrying. In other areas too, self-sufficiency should be a goal. Medical supplies are one. And many countries, including the US, are dependent on China. If something were to happen to China, or if the Chinese were to decide to deliberately act against countries it sees as enemies, it’s easy to imagine the result.

There are other reasons to worry about single sources for critical items. In 2007, Chinese manufacturers sold adulterated food ingredients to pet food manufacturers in the US and elsewhere, causing numerous animals to die. A year later, the same dangerous substance turned up in milk and baby formula, killing six infants in China.

A different kind of “adulteration” affects computer chips. In 2015, a Chinese subcontractor producing server motherboards for an American company secretly added an additional chip to them, one that would allow a hacker to bypass security in any network containing a machine with this board in it. The company’s servers were in use in American warships, drone operation centers, and more. In this instance, the trick was discovered. But it is even possible to modify a standard chip to include a “back door” on its own silicon. Such a hack would be much harder to detect.

The Chinese company Huawei makes 4G and now 5G equipment for cellular phone and data networks. US security officials claim (Huawei denies it) that there is a “back door” in this equipment which makes it possible for Huawei, and of course the Chinese government, to intercept traffic on networks using this equipment.

All this points to the risks in depending on outside suppliers for critical items, whether they be food or computer chips. We should diversify our agriculture and our manufacturing. Self-sufficiency is a worthwhile goal, even if it can only be attained partially. The coronavirus pandemic should be a warning that the worldwide system is not as stable or trustworthy as we have assumed. If we get through this relatively unscathed, we may not be so lucky next time.

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