NZ Friends of Israel Association Inc
Fighting racial intolerance in New Zealand and beyond
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, a survey published Sunday by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) ahead of the country’s 72nd Independence Day traced a surge in the number of Israelis who identify with the state and view its problems as their own.
The increase in the sense of belonging was particularly significant among two groups that are normally sidelined but have now been hit relatively hard by the COVID-19 outbreak: ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arab Israelis.
A recent study has found a substantial shift in the perception of identity in the Arab sector, as [nearly] three of every four Arabs – 75% – living in Israel define themselves as Israeli.
According to the 2020 Pluralism Index composed by the Jewish people’s Policy Institute, 23% of the Arab sector’s members define themselves as “Israeli” and 51% as “Arab Israeli.”
Only 7% of those polled in this segment defined themselves as “Palestinians.”
Still, about 50% of Arab Israelis and 59% of the Muslims living in Israel said they do not believe a Jewish temple ever existed on the Temple Mount.
A few weeks ago, officials in Israel’s Health Ministry were calling for Israel to “medically annex Judea and Samaria” for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic. The notion was that while Israel and the Palestinian Authority are separate political entities, from a public health perspective, they are indivisible.
On a practical level, the call was superfluous. From the moment the virus arrived in Israel, the PA’s Health Ministry began cooperating in an unprecedented manner with its Israeli counterpart. The Palestinians followed Israel’s lead on virtually all aspects of the coronavirus fight. Palestinian medical teams received training in Israeli hospitals. Israel provided the PA with testing kits, protective gear, respirators and other vital equipment for fighting the pandemic. Even the Hamas regime in Gaza viewed Israel as the authority for dealing with the virus.
But with all due respect to “medical annexation,” the collaboration between medical professionals didn’t indicate any change of heart on the part of the Palestinian leadership. Both the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria and the Hamas regime in Gaza are fully capable of simultaneously taking advantage of Israel’s help in fighting the pandemic and using the pandemic as a means to harm Israel. And that is precisely what they are doing.
PA Prime Minister Mohamad Shtayyeh has long been considered a moderate. He was a member of the Palestinian negotiating team with Israel. He is a Western educated academic and a favorite of the European Union. Many viewed PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to appoint Shtayyeh prime minister last year as a sign of moderation.
Alas, the optimism was misplaced.
At a press conference in Ramallah in late March, Shtayyeh propagated multiple blood libels against Israel.
Against IDF soldiers, Shtayyeh alleged, “We have heard testimony that some soldiers are trying to spread the virus through the door handles of cars. It is a case of racism and hatred by people who hope for the death of the other. We will add this to the list of crimes they’ve committed.”
As for Israel as a whole, Shtayyeh accused Israel of using Palestinian workers in Israel as a biological weapon against the Palestinians as a whole. He said Israel wants the thirty thousand Palestinians working for Israeli employers to keep working so that they can get infected with coronavirus and then go home and infect their fellow Palestinians. He added that a resident of his village who worked in Israel returned to the village infected and proceeded to infect twenty of his neighbors with the pandemic.
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz signed a deal Monday to form a “national emergency government” that keeps Netanyahu as the prime minister for now.
Israel has spent more than a year under a caretaker government as neither Netanyahu, who heads the right-wing Likud party, nor Gantz of the center-left Blue and White could assemble a coalition government. With the agreement, the country avoids a fourth national election in less than a year and a half.
The agreement also accedes to Likud demands that Israel annex parts of the West Bank, according to an Israeli TV report. That could happen as early as July.
NZFOI: Under COVID-19, new norms are forming everywhere…
[IAI is Israel’s largest aerospace company. IAI’s Deputy CEO, Eyal] Younian said that while it may be possible to manage COVID-19 in the future, Israel must change its culture because a more serious virus could emerge in the future.
For Israel’s businesses, this will mean less face-to-face interaction. “There will be more video conferences, we will have fewer people in meeting rooms, and there will be less business travel. Israel is a country based on exporting and 80% of IAI’s sales come from outside Israel. We are a defense company and negotiations must be done in person. We must find a creative solution,” he said.
Israel’s non-business social life will also change. There will be “less hugging and kissing [which will be difficult because] we are a warm people,” he said.
NZFOI: As New Zealand considers how technology can be used to combat COVID-19….
“All means will be used to fight the spread of the coronavirus,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on March 14, “including technological means, digital means, and other means that until today I have refrained from using among the civilian population.” As Haaretz reported, this means Israel will now unleash cyber tech “usually used for counter-terror” to enforce quarantines and to check the movements of people testing positive for the virus.
Following the announcement, the country’s Attorney General “approved the use of cyber measures to track patients’ phones,” essentially green-lighting Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, to actively track citizens by geolocating their cellphones and, one can assume, to build a database of where and when. The same intel can also be used to determine who else was in the vicinity of a known patient on a timeline, establishing potential infections, although such measures were not spelled out in any of the announcements today.
And, just like, that Israel joins Iran and China in the deployment of state-level intel gathering tools to track its population as it tries to prevent its coronavirus outbreak from getting out of control. Geolocating phones is a simple tech—in tandem with the carriers, the granularity can be pretty precise in urban locations. The fact this is being presented as a counter-terror intel tool suggests it is more than just a basic policing-level solution, more than just simple geofencing.
Nickolay Mladenov, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, has praised the coordination between the Israeli and Palestine authorities in reacting to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr. Mladenov’s comments were made during a telephone conversation with the other members of the Middle East Quartet, a body set up to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It is made up of representatives of the European Union, Russia, the USA, and the United Nations.
During the call, which took place on Thursday, Mr. Mladenov gave a detailed briefing on the UN COVID-19 response plan, focusing mainly on Gaza, where there is a substantial risk of the disease spreading.
In a statement released on Friday, the coordination and cooperation established between Israel and Palestine, with regard to tackling COVID-19, was described as “excellent”.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – All Israelis should wear face masks while in public as a precaution against the coronavirus, and upcoming Jewish, Muslim and Christian holidays should be marked only with immediate family, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday.
Israel’s Benny Gantz called for an emergency unity government after being elected parliament speaker Thursday, surprise developments that point towards an interim alliance with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to tackle coronavirus.
Gantz’s moves appeared to offer the premier, indicted on corruption charges, a path to extend his 11-year tenure, although no agreement had yet been declared and the shifting political landscape was causing significant fallout within the anti-Netanyahu bloc.
Gantz ally Yair Lapid, who broke with the ex-military chief earlier on Thursday, accused him of surrendering “without a fight”, declaring the break-up of the Blue and White Alliance that Gantz had led.
NZFOI: We wonder if they have thought this through in the context of the pandemic….
A Palestinian anti-siege group has appealed to the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to improve the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip by pressuring the Israeli regime to lift its years-long crippling siege of the impoverished enclave.
Palestinian lawmaker Jamal al-Khudari, who is the head of the Popular Committee against the Siege on Gaza (PCAS), made the comments in a statement.
“The situation in the Gaza Strip entails urgent and decisive intervention from the UN Secretary-General to pressure the occupation to lift the siege,” said Khudari, stressing that “ending the Israeli blockade will contribute to saving the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza.”
