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Israel not only helps its friends. It also has a long record of helping its enemies, sending humanitarian aid, medical personnel, and search-and-rescue teams, to these countries in the wake of natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis. This practice has not lessened the recipients’ enmity. Israel should cease the practice, and direct its aid only to its friends, and to those who need it most, which right now includes Israel’s own people, for the war in Gaza, and Hezbollah rockets, have forced 280,000 Israelis to be internally displaced, having had to leave their communities on the Gaza and Lebanese borders. More on Israel’s aid policy, and why it should be changed, can be found here: “Israel is wrong to give aid to antisemitic countries – opinion,” by Sheila Nazarian, Jerusalem Post, February
In recent months, much has been made by Israel’s enemies of American relief aid to the Jewish state. What many of these critics overlook, likely because they do not know, is that Israel has its own decades-long record of providing humanitarian aid and emergency relief to countries in need, including Muslim-majority countries with no diplomatic ties to Israel – who now repay the Jewish state with inaction, silence, or overt hate in the wake of October 7.
In 1958, within a decade of Israel’s founding, the country formally adopted an international humanitarian aid agenda in an effort to prioritize foreign cooperation. That year, the government officially established MASHAV, the Foreign Ministry’s Center for International Cooperation, to administer its humanitarian efforts. MASHAV helps countries battling hunger, disease, and poverty by providing technical training and sharing Israeli technology.
The office sends Israeli eye doctors – widely considered authorities in the field – to countries across the developing world to treat preventable blindness and ocular disease, setting up “eye camps” using equipment usually unavailable in that country to treat patients and train staff. In the 1970s, MASHAV broadened the scope of its efforts by granting safe-haven in Israel to refugees initially from countries like Kosovo, Bosnia, and Vietnam, and more recently from Darfur.
Since the founding of MASHAV, which is now Israel’s official agency for international development cooperation, the Jewish state has provided humanitarian aid to over 140 countries. Starting in the 1980s, it has also offered humanitarian aid on an emergency basis, supporting countries facing everything from natural disasters to mass casualty terrorist attacks. In 2004, Israel sent 60 tons of aid to Indonesia, a country with no ties to Israel and the largest Muslim population in the world, after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami.
Indonesia refuses to have diplomatic relations with Israel, consistently supports anti-Israel resolutions at the UN, and refused even to express sympathy after the October 7 massacre. Those 60 tons of aid from Israel obviously had no effect on modifying Indonesia’s enmity.
In 2005, Israeli organizations provided aid in Pakistan after the earthquake in Kashmir, with Israeli NGOs dispatching missions to the region to help thousands of families, and in 2010, the state ramped up its earthquake relief efforts by sending a mass mission to Haiti, which included an IDF search-and-rescue team and field hospital. Israel has such a robust tradition of emergency humanitarian relief that the country even provided aid to Turkey and Syria after the 2023 earthquake.
Israel sent aid to Pakistan in 2005 after an earthquake struck, with no visible change subsequently in Pakistan’s attitude toward the Jewish state; it still refuses to recognize Israel, and has made clear that it will not do so until Israel agrees to be squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines, and allows the establishment of a Palestinian state on the territory vacated, which must include east Jerusalem. That will never happen.
While Turkish President Erdogan has for years continued his thunderous denunciations of Israel that began with the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010, Israel did not hesitate a minute, but was among the very first countries to send aid to Turkey after the earthquake in 2023, providing humanitarian aid as well as critically important search-and-rescue teams. Those Israeli teams are credited with saving the lives of 19 Turks, pulled from under the rubble.
But after the atrocities of October 7, no words of sympathy for Israel were uttered by the Turkish government or the Turkish people. Palestinian flags fluttered in Turkish cities, anti-Israel and antisemitic posters were pasted on walls and displayed in shop windows — “Jews not wanted” was one of them — and Erdogan praised Hamas after its operatives had on October 7 beheaded babies, burned children alive, raped, tortured, and murdered girls, sliced the breasts off women, gouged out the eyes and cut off the genitalia of men. That lifesaving aid Israel provided after the earthquake to Turkey earlier in the year did not soften Erdogan’s rants against the “Zionist entity”; they have only increased. His party’s organ, the newspaper Yeni Safak, headlined a story on Israel “The terror state must be destroyed.” The Turks themselves have held marches in support of Hamas, calling for an end to Israel’s “aggression” in Gaza. A politician from Erdogan’s AKP Party said at a public hearing that he was praying for the soul of Hitler, adding that the world will find peace only when it is cleansed of Jews and that the Holocaust was “unfinished.”
Israel’s aid to Syria after the same 2023 earthquake was swiftly offered; the Syrians made a show of refusing to accept such aid from the “Zionist entity,” but in fact, in strict secrecy, it accepted the humanitarian aid, though it did not allow Israeli search-and-rescue teams inside Syria. Syria not only remains in a state of war with Israel, but it continues to allow Iranian-backed groups in the country to shell the Golan Heights. That is the malevolent Syrian response to Israel’s good deed.
So the next time there is a tsunami in Indonesia, or an earthquake in Pakistan, Turkey, or Syria, the Israelis should not immediately dispatch humanitarian aid and search-and-rescue teams. Instead, both the government, and Jewish aid agencies, should sit tight. Let the world realize that Israel is no longer going to be a source of succor for its enemies, who have so often pocketed its aid and then continued to denounce the Jewish state until the welkin rings with anti-Israel hate. Just this once, Israel, behave the way all other countries behave. Stop thinking you have to be so very tikkun-olamish and in all things a light unto the nations, including by helping your worst enemies. No, you don’t.
Many of Israel’s enemies declare that their criticism of the Jewish state is not motivated by antisemitism, but by opposition to Zionism, by Israel’s “disproportionate responses” to Arab/Muslim attacks, its “apartheid policies,” ad nauseam. All such excuses are of course, a pack of lies. But Hugh’s criticism of Israel is, for once, entirely legitimate. Will Israel ever learn?
We learned that you are a racist moron.
Mac- I don’t understand why you insulted me. I’m on Israel’s side, completely. No one is more pro-Israel than I. I just believe it’s foolhardy to give aid and comfort to one’s implacable enemies.
anti-Zionism IS anti-Semitism. It’s the epitome of anti-Semitism. – Not clear from your comment that you know that.
No amount of “aid” can cover up the fact Israel is directly targeting civilians. It has been Israeli policy for decades. As long as Israel continues to engage in crimes against humanity no amount of “aid” is going to win over anyone.
Not true, but here are two examples of actual Israeli “genocide.” :
https://www.thejc.com/news/world/israeli-hospital-treats-hamas-leaders-daughter-vq2mxhgy
https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/hamas-leaders-granddaughter-treated-in-israeli-hospital-s2z77xsy
You are a complete idiotic antisemitic moron.
Oh dear, you’ve taken a wrong turn and wound up in reality, `Your blatant bloody support for Hamas atrocities is noted (you apparently like gang raping women to death, burning people alive and beheading babies, then looting their homes) May you learn how it feels one day from the other side of your argument`
It certainly will never be from Israelis who endanger themselves to avoid harm to viscous hateful civilians who participated in the rape and kidnap of Israelis,without conscience, and held hostages in their homes.
Before Pearl Harbor we were sending scrap Metal to Japan look how they used it on Dec 7th 1941
The Dulles brothers did business with the enemy. Had Dewey won in 1948, Israel would not have been recognized by the Truman. Under Eisenhower, the Sec. of State and CIA director were the brothers. Brotherhoods can be a problem.
After 1400 years Jews and Israel ( and the entire non-Islamic world) should have learned the fact that
depraved psychopathic murderous Islam has been and always will be a scourge on humanity.
That is not going to change.
Bet on it.
There’s a very old fable, or parable, that’s been told in many variations over many years, that comes to mind:
There’s a terrible flood, A frog and a snake are on one side of a rushing torrent, needing to cross it to safety. The frog offers to let the snake ride on his back as he swims across, and the snake accepts the frog’s life-saving offer.
As soon as they reach dry land on the other bank, the venomous reptile slithers off the frog’s back, and immediately sinks his poisonous fangs into the poor frog’s neck.
“Why did you bite me?!” gasps the dying frog. “I just saved your life!”
“Because I am a snake!” sneers the ungrateful killer.
Reminds me of the title of one of Brigitte Gabriel’s books–“Because They Hate.”
Lincoln certainly did not feed the Confederate population during the Civil War-The Union blockaded the South, besieged Vicksburg and Petersburg and ensured that the South could not manufacture anything or feed itsellf. , The US definitely did not feed Germany and Japan’s civilian populations during WW2- Aerial bombardment and submaruine warfare were waged as means of destroying the enemy’s willpower and ability to fight. It is yet another manifestation of anti Semitism to demand that Israel feed its mortal enemies during wartime
Israel, and Jews in general, have always taken it upon themselves to be better human beings than their enemies. These are among the unifying principles of the Jewish people. Why must we abase ourselves by being more like them tha to continue being ourselves?
In this country Jews always vote for their executioners. Looks like the Israelis are doing the same by letting people who want to kill them work in Israel. Hopefully less so since the Oct 7 attack.
This Tikkun Olam (Repair the World) mind set among the Jews must be eradicated. No good deed ever goes unpunished.
Oh no not again.
I have no Democrat voters in my family or circle. No we were not raised Orthodox. Most other Jews I read about and hear about are abandoning the left.
Must you engage is anti-Semitic “blame them Jooz” mainstream media focus on the tiny Jewish vote that cannot sway any election in the US? Blame the Jews for being too dark complected in the 20th century, but now too white. For capitalism but yet for Bolshevism.
Its people like you on the non-left, and you’re not alone, that make some, mostly older, American Jews, hesitate to change voting patterns. They have no friends on the left. But few on the right.
Well, we Jews are used to standing alone.
Maybe hang up your mindless hate.
United States Should Stop Sending Aid to its Enemies
As a Christian, I try to adhere to Jesus’ admonition to love your enemies. In the long run, Israel’s magnanimity will bring benefit to the nation.
There’s a famous tale of a Gaza child being treated in an Israeli hospital. A documentary was being filmed about the Palestinians getting medical care in Israel. The child was recovering, and the mother was being interviewed about her child’s future. She expressed joy at his recovery and looked forward to the day her child could join the resistance and die as a shahid fighting the Jews. The medical staff who’d treated her child turned pale to hear this, but such medical treatments continued until October 7. Even the leaders of Hamas came to Israel for treatment, then went home to rejoin the fight.
The problem is one of a deep, cultural nature – there is no concept of “good will” in arab culture. The West needs to stop treating arabs as if they are Westerners. They are not. They are not individualists and their societies have little care for the concept of individualism. They do not operate on the individualism-guilt-atonement axis but rather on the tribalism-shame-revenge one and that makes all the difference in the world. The more Israel (or any Western entity) treats arab hostilities with restraint and compassion the more those arabs feel insulted and detest that entity and the less they are even able to concede defeat.
We learned this dynamic in WWII when we fought Japan. The Japanese would not have been able to surrender but for our merciless bombing of their civilian populations. The Japanese respected us for fighting them like men and they were, thus, able to eventually surrender. If we had been fighting them with one hand held behind our back they would have been too insulted to be able to surrender and would have kept fighting on and on and on. Instead, we ruthlessly prosecuted the war and they ended up respecting us and becoming one of our most trustworthy and faithful allies (of course, that was also after we took over complete control of the country and ran it like a dictatorship until the culture was changed as we saw fit). We prosecute no wars like that anymore. In fact, right after WWII we declared all successful tactics and policies of that war – the most successful and best fought war in history – to be immoral and “illegal” in some insane ‘global’ sense.
Bottom line. God knows the treachery that has been hurled at Israel, and he is not going to forgive or forget.