Israel’s ability to protect itself and adapt its economy to the new post-global village reality will in large part determine how it survives and prospers in the post-global village world now taking shape.
By Caroline B. Glick, ISRAEL HAYOM
In the face of the steeply rising number of coronavirus patients and the breakneck speed of political changes in Israel, few people have stopped to notice that the world we have grown accustomed to living in for the past generation is falling apart. The global village is collapsing under the weight of the pandemic.
How Israel deals with this dramatic turn of events today, and in the coming weeks, months and years will determine both how we emerge from the present crisis and how we manage in the new world now taking form.
Israel’s food supply system is a perfect example of the global changes to being wrought by the virus. In Israel, five basic foodstuffs are produced locally: fruits, vegetables, eggs, poultry, and milk. Most grains, sugar, rice, salt, meat, and other foodstuffs are imported.
Out of a total agricultural workforce of 70,000, 25,000 are migrant workers from Thailand and another 25,000 are from the Palestinian Authority. According to Agriculture Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, concerns over the coronavirus prevented 1,500 workers from Thailand scheduled to arrive at the beginning of the month from entering the country. The Palestinian workforce is down to 18,000 and dropping due to the quarantine the PA has placed on its population.
The labor shortages couldn’t come at a worse time. Currently, there are a half billion shekels worth of fruit and vegetables ready for harvest. If they aren’t picked in the next three weeks, they will rot on the trees and in the fields.
Three weeks ago, the HaShomer HaHadash organization began getting flooded with calls from farmers for help. HaShomer HaHadash is a volunteer agricultural support organization founded in 2007 to protect Israeli farmers from Arab and Bedouin criminal gangs who extort farmers and ranchers and carry out agricultural theft and sabotage on a massive level.
“These calls were different,” explains HaShomer HaHadash’s leader Yoel Zilberman. “We are used to receiving calls about sabotage, and extortion and sending our volunteers to guard and herd. These calls were about the harvest, the national food supply.”
Zilberman and his colleagues realized the implications of the loss of a harvest for Israel’s food supply and began drawing up a plan to help the distressed farmers. Two weeks ago, Zilberman approached Hanegbi and offered to organize a corps of volunteers to save the harvest. Comprised of the organization’s roster of volunteers, cadets at pre-military leadership academies, youth movement alumni and from twelfth graders, Zilberman’s volunteers would work in shifts in the fields. With government finance, Hashomer Hahadash would provide for all their needs. Hanegbi agreed.
Last week, the government approved an emergency order to organize the corps of volunteers. The first hundred young people arrived in the fields on Tuesday. Operating in compliance with Health Ministry guidelines, HaShomer HaHadash launched a smartphone application called “Sundo” where prospective volunteers can join the operation. Zilberman plans to expand his roll of volunteers to include foreign students stranded in Israel with nothing to do after the coronavirus caused their programs to be canceled. He assesses there are up to twenty thousand foreign youth in Israel who could potentially join in the effort.
To be sure, this initiative, which will hopefully enable Israel to surmount the coronavirus-induced international labor shortage, is intended to be a short-term fix. All parties to the initiative assume that once the crisis abates, labor flows will return to their pre-coronavirus levels. But there is no way to know whether this assessment is correct. The coronavirus-induced shortage in migrant, agricultural laborers points to a much wider phenomenon that is unlikely to disappear when the quarantines are over.
The coronavirus pandemic won’t destroy global markets. But it will change them radically and reduce their size and scope. In the case of agriculture, the coronavirus has exposed large-scale vulnerabilities in both agricultural import models and domestic production. At the outset of the crisis, cargo ships laden with foodstuffs from China and Italy were laid up in the ports for weeks until port workers and the Health Ministry could develop protocols for safely offloading them. Dozens of shipments were diverted to Cyprus, at great cost to importers.
Who is to say that food supplies in China or other countries won’t be compromised again in the future? And what happens in the event of war? Naval warfare can easily endanger food imports to Israel over a prolonged period. The model of dependence on foreign suppliers needs to be adapted in the face of what we are learning.
As to domestic production, according to Hanegbi, over the past decade, the number of Israelis engaged in agriculture has decreased by 60 percent as the children of farmers are choosing other professions. Obviously, this is a major vulnerability. Israel needs food security and food security means expanding our domestic agricultural capacity. The incoming government needs to develop a national plan to support domestic agriculture and inspire young people to choose agriculture as a profession and way of life. In Israel, the next crisis is always just around the corner. And the next war or pandemic may make our current endangered harvest look like child’s play.
What is true in relation to agriculture is doubly true in relation to manufacturing. As we are finding in our race to purchase more respirators, it is ill-advised in the extreme to depend on foreign suppliers for food, medical equipment, and medicines in times of crisis. Until January 2020, it seemed perfectly rational to outsource manufacturing to China. Now, as we face global shortages in respirators and other medical equipment, it is obvious that China is not a trustworthy supplier.
This week Jim Geraghty published a timeline of China’s deception of the world regarding the nature of the coronavirus in the National Review. Geraghty showed that Chinese authorities in Wuhan realized the virus was spread between humans in the first week of December. But it wasn’t until January 20 that the Chinese admitted that this was the case.
In the intervening six weeks, the Chinese lied repeatedly about the infectiousness of the virus and jailed doctors and citizen journalists who tried to warn the Chinese people and the world of the danger. Also during those six weeks, five million people left Wuhan. Scores of thousands of them got on airplanes and flew to Europe and the US bringing the virus with them.
Still today, the Chinese are apparently hiding critical information about the virus from the world. While the Western media heralds the Chinese success in bringing the infection rate down to zero inside China, Japan’s Kyodo News Agency reported this week that the Chinese data are phony. Physicians in Wuhan told the agency’s reporters that the reason the rate of infection has dropped to zero is because the Chinese authorities have banned testing.
The coronavirus exposed a truth that global village fans have spent the past generation denying: Borders are important.
From 1997 until the coronavirus, Europe’s internal national borders were all open. Over the past few weeks, 15 EU member states have shut their doors and thrown away the key. Germany – the birthplace of the vision of the European common market and nation – initially banned the export of protective medical equipment to its European “brethren.”
When the Italians begged for help, no EU member state sent in medical teams to save their fellow Europeans.
If just last month, the heads of the European Commission had the last word in all discussions among EU member states, today no one cares what they have to say. As Professor Thomas Jaeger from the University of Cologne told the Los Angeles Times, “We’re seeing an enormous delegitimation of the authority of the EU government in this crisis. The longer the crisis lasts, the more nationalism will return.”
In many ways, regardless of how long it lasts, the pandemic has already taken a permanent toll on the European Union. EU members have taken one another’s measure and realized that when push comes to shove, they have only their own peoples and governments to rely on. The Italians and Spaniards aren’t likely to care what the feckless bureaucrats in Brussels or the selfish Germans have to say about their national policies after this is over.
The same goes for the UN and other major international governing institutions.
UN Ambassador Danny Danon wrote Wednesday in Israel Hayom that this is the UN’s finest hour. In his words, “UN institutions, particularly the World Health Organization, are proving that the organization remains the main body that the world needs in its struggle with Corona.”
Danon is mistaken, however. The WHO has played an unhelpful, indeed destructive role in this crisis. As Geraghty and others have shown, the WHO was a full partner in China’s dissimulation efforts. The WHO waited until January 21, after the first coronavirus patient was diagnosed in the US, to admit that it is transferred between people despite the fact that WHO officials knew that humans infected one another in early January. This week an Oxford-based research group announced it will no longer base its coronavirus assessments on WHO data, which it considers not credible.
This week Walter Russell Mead noted in the Wall Street Journal that international organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization are playing no significant role in the global fight against the coronavirus. National leaders and agencies, who are directly responsible for protecting their people are calling the shots irrespective of WHO rules and IMF spending guidelines.
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the critical failings of the global village model for international integration. International labor markets, global trade and international governing institutions have proven vulnerable to shocks, unreliable and of limited use. It has also reminded us of foundational truths that have been shunted aside since the end of the Cold War. National borders protect nations. National authorities and fellow citizens are far more reliable and helpful in times of crisis than transnational, and international organizations.
To survive and protect themselves from global shocks, nations must have autarkic agricultural and manufacturing capabilities. China is not a reliable industrial base.
Israel’s ability to protect itself today, and adapt its economy to the new post-global village reality will in large part determine how it survives and prospers in the post-global village world now taking shape.
Full article at: https://www.timesofisrael.com/by-eating-local-israel-will-avoid-feared-food-shortages-authorities-say/
The following article is very informative about Israeli agriculture.
Full article is sited below. The above is a small cut and paste. Worth reading the whole article for anyone interested in Israeli agriculture.
https://www.israel21c.org/the-top-12-ways-israel-feeds-the-world/
@ Reader:
Israel needs more agricultural workers that is true. Many are Palestinians and many are from Thailand (who they regularly bring in) Israel produces enough food currently for itself and in some segments like Dairy has a healthy export business. It has lots of greenhouses which produce vegetables and flowers (mainly exported).
Israeli agriculture is in the Negev, Arava, Beit Shean Valley, Galilee, Golan Heights, Jordan Valley, Samaria and there is still some in the Shomron (Center of Israel).
Do not believe me that is okay. There were links to articles in my first post. I do not need to find articles on this to know what I am talking about on this subject. I still have friends involved in agriculture in Israel who I periodically talk to about this subject and others. One of my best friends with pride took to me to their professional dairy barn (refet in Hebrew) were he showed me the techniques that made them the highest yielding cows in the world. I used to live in this location.
@ Bear Klein:
It is lovely if it is indeed self-sufficient. Apparently, this is YOUR fervent BELIEF because you don’t cite or refer to any sources.
Glick states: “As to domestic production, according to Hanegbi, over the past decade, the number of Israelis engaged in agriculture has decreased by 60 percent as the children of farmers are choosing other professions. Obviously, this is a major vulnerability. Israel needs food security and food security means expanding our domestic agricultural capacity.”
This completely contradicts your BELIEF that Israel’s
domestic food production is sufficient to satisfy Israel’s needs.
It also states in the Bloomberg’s article that I quoted that Israel is relying in its exports more and more on hi-tech and pharmaceuticals.
I must emphasize again that I DO NOT rely on FAITH OR BELEIFS when writing about FACTS, at least, I do my best in this regard.
I also do not want to argue about beliefs because it is useless and pointless.
I prefer to state what I know to be FACTS or REALITY and see whether someone can give other FACTS that disprove mine or prove that my reality isn’t.
Reader Israel now ships lots of high-tech stuff plus diamonds the numbers have grown there. Israel’s whole GDP has grown tremendously from when it mostly exported citrus. Anyway believe what you like if it makes you happy. Israel main issue in agriculture is the employee of foreign workers. Glick in her article above states:
It is self-sufficient in these areas. It does still export even though it is smaller percentage of overall exports.
My reply has disappeared. I am repeating it.
Then what is this?
“”https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-05/the-end-of-the-jaffa-orange-highlights-israel-economic-shift””
“Since peaking in the early 1980s at 1.8 million tons a year, Israeli citrus production has dropped almost 75%. That decline highlights Israel’s shift away from its socialist, agrarian roots and its emergence as a tech powerhouse. With a strengthening currency making exports less competitive and scarce water supplies raising the cost of cultivation, oranges—and many other crops—are no longer worth the effort. Agriculture has fallen to 2% of goods exports, from a peak above 40% in the 1950s, as the plains and gentle hills around Tel Aviv have been bulldozed to make way for malls, apartment blocks, and office parks for growing ranks of software coders and pharmaceutical researchers. “Land here in the center of Israel is so expensive, most of the orchards were cut down,” third-generation orange grower Idan Zehavi says in the grove first planted by his grandfather.”
@ Bear Klein:
Then what is this?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-05/the-end-of-the-jaffa-orange-highlights-israel-economic-shift
“Since peaking in the early 1980s at 1.8 million tons a year, Israeli citrus production has dropped almost 75%. That decline highlights Israel’s shift away from its socialist, agrarian roots and its emergence as a tech powerhouse. With a strengthening currency making exports less competitive and scarce water supplies raising the cost of cultivation, oranges—and many other crops—are no longer worth the effort. Agriculture has fallen to 2% of goods exports, from a peak above 40% in the 1950s, as the plains and gentle hills around Tel Aviv have been bulldozed to make way for malls, apartment blocks, and office parks for growing ranks of software coders and pharmaceutical researchers. “Land here in the center of Israel is so expensive, most of the orchards were cut down,” third-generation orange grower Idan Zehavi says in the grove first planted by his grandfather.”
@ Bear Klein:
Then what is this about?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-05/the-end-of-the-jaffa-orange-highlights-israel-economic-shift
“ince peaking in the early 1980s at 1.8 million tons a year, Israeli citrus production has dropped almost 75%. That decline highlights Israel’s shift away from its socialist, agrarian roots and its emergence as a tech powerhouse. With a strengthening currency making exports less competitive and scarce water supplies raising the cost of cultivation, oranges—and many other crops—are no longer worth the effort. Agriculture has fallen to 2% of goods exports, from a peak above 40% in the 1950s, as the plains and gentle hills around Tel Aviv have been bulldozed to make way for malls, apartment blocks, and office parks for growing ranks of software coders and pharmaceutical researchers. “Land here in the center of Israel is so expensive, most of the orchards were cut down,” third-generation orange grower Idan Zehavi says in the grove first planted by his grandfather.”
“On Saturday, some 3,460 people were diagnosed with the virus and another four died, bringing the total to 12 dead.
A 73-year-old man from Haifa who suffered from pre-existing conditions died at Rambam Hospital Friday morning. His wife, 71, remains hospitalized at Rambam with coronavirus. The couple had traveled to the Tenerife Spanish Canary island. They checked into Rambam with coronavirus on March 9.
Overnight, a 93-year-old male who was hospitalized at Soroka Medical Center and had suffered from several pre-existing conditions passed away, as did a 76-year-old woman who was being treated at Beilinson Medical Center in Tel Aviv.”
ONly 12 deaths from a supposed pandemic in a nation of eight million plus people is not exactly evidence of a pandemic. Least of all when most of these 12 were both elderly and suffering from serious preconditions.
All the more odd , since the severe restrictions on Israeli travel and movement have been in place for only about two weeks. Before that Israelis travelled throughout the world, including to many of the country’s where coronavirus cases are very numerous (China, Italy and Spain among others). They also travelled very extensively within Israel, and frequently congregated in large numbers and in close quarters with each other in everything from rocks concerts to clubs to shul services. Strange that so few have both got sick and tested positive for COVID-19.
Also odd is the low death toll in view of a report in Jerusalem Post earlier, citing both Israeli doctors and the World Health Organization, that Israel has one of the highest annual death tolls from infectious diseases among the nations who are regarded as “developed.” and who are members of the organization of economically developed nations (can’t remember its name–G-something, I believe). Of these nations, only Turkey was reported to have a higher infectious disease death rate. If a large number of people die of infectious diseases every year in Israel, why have so few who died or become seriously ill tested positive for COVID-19.
I am just asking these questions, not claiming to have the answers.
Perhaps Israel’s statistics are either more or less accurate, while those of countries like Italy and Spain that report high death rate are inaccurate.
Perhaps the medical authorities in Spain and Italy are fudging their figures, which would not be difficult to do. Both countries are in desperate need of a financial bailout fron=m the European central bank and German banks. At least for Italy, I read on the Italian Ministry of Health site that the European central bank has in fact written down all of Italy’s government debts, totally in the trillions, in response to Italy’s supposed health crisis. I don’t know if this is true for the Spaniards as well.
Israel for anyone who is not aware has volunteer networks (that have now expanded) to increase food distribution to those who can not now get go out to get food. People will not be starving!
Reader Said:
You need to learn about Israeli agriculture you comments are completed flawed. I lived on Kibbutzim and Israel has very efficient and plentiful agriculture.
Israel has very modern and progressive farming also for fruit trees and poultry. Israel teaches many other countries modern poultry raising methods.
Local cows produce the highest amounts of milk per animal in the world, with an average of 10,208 kilograms (around 10,000 liters) of dairy in 2009, according to data published in 2011 by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, outperforming cows in the US (9,331 kg (20,571 lb) per cow), Japan (7,497), the European Union (6,139) and Australia (5,601).[9]
A total of 1,304 million liters of milk was produced by Israeli cows in 2010.[9]
All of Israel’s milk consumption originates from dairy farms within the country with most herds consisting largely of Israel-Holsteins, a high-yielding, disease-resistant breed. Furthermore, sheep milk is exported. In terms of poultry, which makes up two thirds of meat consumption, 85% originate from moshavim
Israel imports much of its grains and some beef but grows its own vegetables.
@ adamdalgliesh:
“Medical bureacrats. etc.” I’ve never thought about it in these terms, this is an interesting turn of thought. I tend to see political gains for certain people/countries in this situation.
Isn’t this behavior bordering on the criminal?
What if this was a real killer, like the Spanish flu?
Also, I don’t think that “In Israel, five basic foodstuffs are produced locally: fruits, vegetables, eggs, poultry, and milk”, at least not enough to be self-sufficient
Israel has been building over the agricultural lands and relying more and more on imports.
Medical bureacrats heading “disease control” agencies are seeing their power and publicity increase vastly as a result of the panic. Doctors and hospitals are doing a thriving business. People who have invested in the vaccines being developed for COVID-19, and the medications said to be effective in treating it, will make a fortune. It is a reasonable assumption that many of these investors are doctors, who are often very rich in this country.
Millions of the rest of us in Israel, the United States and elsewhere will die of diseases created by the panic.
@ adamdalgliesh:
“Most grains, sugar, rice, salt, meat, and other foodstuffs are imported.” And are not essential for survival (especially refined sugar), except for salt and some grains.
Israel’s is a special situation, anyway, and it should ideally always be independent and self-sufficient, pandemic or not.
Appalling. Many Israelis, especially the poor, may starve to death or die from malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies. Malnutrition also increases the risk for Israelis of contracting and dying from numerous diseases, by compromising their immune systems.
I do not believe that there is a genuine coronavirus pandemic. Only the usual seasonal infections, which can be caused by many different viruses and bacteria. But the panic and hysteria over this nonexistent crises has given rise to a very real and deadly one.