Astounding Facts Most People Don’t Know About Israel 15
Israel’s world-class humanitarian programmes are an expression of the country’s core values
A quiz question: who said this? Whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our own welfare will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity.”
It’s the final (clunkily translated) line of Theodor Herzl’s 1896 pamphlet The Jewish State [1], widely regarded as the foundational document of modern Zionism.
Herzl was a secular Jew. Yet his statement resonates powerfully with Jewish religious aspirations of Tikkun Olam – repairing the world – a notion that translates into a highly contemporary ideal of improving society through individual and collective action. According to David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, the Jewish injunction to act as an Or Lagoyim – a light unto the nations – should be the “guiding star” of Israeli behaviour.
David Kramer [2] has written that Israel’s extensive humanitarian efforts, at home and abroad, are a manifestation of the modern Zionist vision as imagined by Herzl long before the State was established. It may also be interpreted as a practical response to the historical Jewish experience of marginalisation and abuse at the hands of colonial powers.
While Jewish and Zionist ethical values undoubtedly motivate Israel’s commitment to extending aid and succour to those in need around the world, that generosity of spirit is frequently greeted with disbelief, cynicism and contempt. Abir Kopty [3], writing in Middle East Eye, informed her readers that it amounted to a monstrous deception designed to conceal Israel’s inhumanity: “The use of humanitarian aid to whitewash Israel's record of occupation and human rights violations is not new. From Nepal to Haiti, Uganda to Fiji, this humanitarian aid is always followed by a propaganda effort to tell the world how ‘Israel is human’, something that is far from reality.”
That’s the view of a hate-filled extremist, of course, but it nevertheless contains a tiny kernel of truth. Providing aid to people in need unquestionably assists the desire of donor countries to project a positive image. There’s no shame in that. The UK government’s British Council, an organisation that says it “builds connections, understanding and trust between people in the UK and other countries,” openly asserts that national self-interest should inform policy in this sphere. A House of Lords Select Committee [4] goes further: “the promotion of British values through the funding of international development projects can yield significant soft power gains.”
The strategy of providing aid in the hope of reaping at least some political dividends worked for a while during the first two decades of Israel’s existence. It came to an abrupt halt when developing countries in Africa and Asia succumbed to pressure from the Arab League to sever diplomatic and commercial links with the Jewish state in the wake of the 1967 and 1973 wars. But that didn’t damage this strand of Israeli foreign policy for long though it did generate a degree of cynicism in the political leadership. It may partly explain why Israel’s official aid budget accounts to a mere 0.1% of GNP, well short of the 0.7% recommended by the UN. The former figure is misleading, however, as it seriously underestimates the totality of Israel’s aid efforts across multiple governmental, civil society and private sectors, often in conjunction with third parties or with Jewish groups abroad.
The main official Israeli channel for delivering foreign aid is Mashav [5], the Hebrew acronym for the Agency for International Development Cooperation. Launched in 1958 by foreign minister Golda Meir following her return from Africa, it represented Israel’s defiant response to the Bandung Afro-Asian conference of 1955 from which Israel had been pointedly excluded. The agency coordinates Israeli agricultural, educational and medical programmes in developing countries, particularly those that suffered under the yoke of colonialism and foreign exploitation. Since its establishment, around 300,000 professionals from more than 132 countries have participated in Mashav's training courses.
Other notable sources of Israeli aid include IsraAID [6,7], an NGO that has delivered extensive programmes to more than 50 disaster-affected countries since 2001, and Save A Child’s Heart [8] that has provided free lifesaving cardiac care to over 5,000 children (half from the Arab world, including the Palestinian Authority) in 62 countries since 1995. SACH was awarded the UN’s Population Award in 2018.
A key provider of overseas aid is the military. The IDF was a pioneer in eliding humanitarian and military objectives. Its first formal humanitarian operation was in 1953, when an earthquake had cost over 1,000 lives in Greece. Although Israel was struggling for survival, physically and economically, Israeli navy ships were diverted from an exercise to assist the survivors and give them necessary medical care. Since then, teams from the IDF Medical Corps and Home Front Command have provided rescue and medical services across the globe, including after an earthquake in Turkey in 1999, an earthquake in Haiti in 2010, a typhoon in the Philippines in 2013 and an earthquake in Nepal in 2015.
The Mexican Ambassador to the United Nations [9] spoke of Israel’s immediate response to two devastating Mexican earthquakes in 2017: “Other countries can absolutely learn from Israel’s rapid reaction time and its ability to be on site, build field hospitals and have the necessary human resources and infrastructure in place mere hours after a natural disaster occurs around the world.”
Israel’s emergency assistance has even extended to her enemies. For around two decades from 1978, the IDF ran a medical unit near the Lebanese border where victims of the prolonged civil war were treated - it became known as The Good Fence. And for many years, including during the most recent full-scale conflict with Hamas in 2014, Israel has permitted essential supplies such as food, clothing, medicines, fuel and electricity to be transferred daily from Israel into Gaza. Despite repeated rocket attacks from that territory, she has continued to facilitate the entry of Gazan patients (including two relatives of the Hamas prime minister) to Israel for specialist medical care, and established clinics near the Gaza border to enable injured Palestinians to be treated by experienced trauma surgeons.
The horrific Syrian civil war prompted the army's Northern Command to launch Operation Good Neighbour in 2016. This bold initiative served 200,000 residents of south-western Syria via a coordinated programme of medical and civilian humanitarian aid that had actually started in secret several years earlier. Its central feature was the establishment of a field hospital at a military post in the Golan Heights near the Syrian border where 7,000 patients received care in the day clinic. More than 4,900 injured Syrians, including 1,300 children, were treated there then transferred to Israeli hospitals. The operation was forced to close down when Assad’s forces took control of southern Syria.
In the same year, the World Health Organization [10] recognized the IDF’s expert emergency medical team, as “number one in the world.” That’s high praise indeed from an organisation not generally known for its friendliness to Israel.
Just as Herzl prophesied the rebirth of the Jewish state by the mid-twentieth century, he was equally prescient about its benign role in the world thereafter. That the world too often fails to reciprocate with a commensurate appreciation of Israel’s impressive contribution to humanity doesn’t change the reality. Nor will it deter future Israeli governments of all hues from continuing to assist those in need wherever they live or however hostile their regimes. This powerful philanthropic impulse is a national characteristic around which all Israeli citizens can unite with genuine pride.
1. Herzl T. The Jewish State. London, Penguin, 2010 (originally Der Judenstaat, Vienna, 1896).
2. Kramer, D. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/my-state-of-the-heart-with-coronavirus/
3. Kopty A. https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/there-nothing-genuine-about-israels-humanitarian-aid-syrians, July 2018.
4. House of Lords Select Committee on Soft Power and UK's Influence, London, UK, 2014. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201314/ldselect/ldsoftpower/150/15008.htm#n338
5. Mashav https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/mashav/AboutMASHAV/Pages/Background.aspx
6.IsraAID https://www.israaid.org/about
7. Gradstein L, Jerusalem Post, 27 September 2020 https://www.jpost.com/magazine/israaid-fixing-the-world-one-disaster-at-a-time-643412
8. Save a Child’s Heart https://saveachildsheart.org
9. Wurtman R. Honest Reporting, 20 January 2020 https://honestreporting.com/idf-humanitarian-aid-missions-saving-the-world/
10. Gross JA. Times of Israel, 13 November 2016 https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-ranks-idf-emergency-medical-team-as-no-1-in-the-world/
