Swine flu in Israel

Wrong on H1N1


When mid-summer headlines warn that 700 young Israelis may die in the course of 2010 from the H1N1 virus, it is natural to feel anxious. A quarter of Israelis, say health experts, may contract swine flu, leaving a third of the population sick at home. Some 150,000 Israelis could find themselves hospitalized. If the epidemic gains momentum, authorities would have to close schools, kindergartens and daycare centers. Gatherings from classical concerts to football matches might be canceled. Commuters would be dissuaded from using crowded buses. We could see people walking down the streets wearing surgical masks.

Two basic questions come to mind: How concerned should Israelis be? And is the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu - he's also health minister - managing preparations for the crisis effectively? The two issues are obviously connected.

Experts surmise that the death rate from swine flu is not likely to go beyond that of regular influenza. That still means more people will die - many hundreds as usual of the regular flu, and hundreds more of swine flu. The difference is that H1N1 appears to be particularly risky for people between 15 and 49, whereas regular influenza tends to be most harmful to the elderly and those whose immune system is compromised. People over 40 seem to have acquired immunity due to previous exposure that makes them less susceptible to H1N1 virus.

Israel's public health system is positioned to provide citizens with protection on par with those of other advanced societies where sanitary conditions are good and adequate supplies of expensive antiviral drugs are readily available. Contingency plans for more hospital beds and enhanced emergency services are in the works. So, based on what we know today, there is no reason for panic.

YET AUTHORITIES face a dilemma that brings us back to the question of the government's approach to the epidemic. Scientists are at work perfecting a vaccine that could be available in early winter. But there are no guarantees that H1N1 will not mutate into a different strain by the time the vaccine is disseminated. Moreover, people will require two inoculations against H1N1, and getting them to come back for their second jab could prove problematic. Those who need to be vaccinated against the regular flu would have to get three separate shots. The Center for Disease Control in the US is urging people over 65 who routinely take the seasonal vaccine to do so as soon as it is available. We trust Israel's health funds will follow the CDC's lead.

An H1N1 vaccine that is rushed from the laboratory to the pharmacy could have unanticipated side-effects. But the critical public policy decision pending is whether to purchase in advance the not-yet-perfected vaccine and do so in huge quantities. Netanyahu has ordered that NIS 450 million already earmarked for the purchase of medications that would expand the arsenal of treatments available for cancer, mental illness, heart disease and other serious disorders be redirected for battling H1N1. And he has ordered that masses of Israelis be vaccinated. But many may refuse, as is their right. The Health Ministry would then be stuck with expensive vaccine.

In contrast, US health officials plan to focus their vaccination efforts on pregnant women, people who live with or care for children younger than six months, health care and emergency services personnel, people between the ages of six months and 24 years, and people aged 25 through 64 who are at higher risk for H1N1 because of chronic health disorders or compromised immune systems.

Israeli health experts are divided over the wisdom of Netanyahu's approach. Deputy Health Minister Ya'acov Litzman favors something closer to the US approach, which would protect those most vulnerable and avoid decimating the expanded health basket for other diseases.

The main reason to vaccinate citizens in a nationwide program is to lower the pool of people who could prove to be a reservoir of new infection. Is Netanyahu's judgment to give priority to eradicating H1N1 at the expense of other public health concerns the right call? Not if you believe that H1N1 is already an epidemic/pandemic that cannot be eradicated, but that it is only a serious condition for a relatively small and identifiable population. That seems to be the scientific consensus. A poll of family doctors in Israel found that most oppose Netanyahu's approach.

We urge him to rethink his plan for mass inoculations at the expense of the expanded health basket.

East Jerusalem evictions

Jews & Sheikh Jarrah

It was not a pretty picture. The belongings of two Palestinian Arab families dumped in the street after they were evicted from their homes in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. They were expelled on Sunday after Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the land upon which their homes were built belonged to the Sephardi Jewish community.

This area, also known as "Simon the Just," was purchased by Jews at the end of the 19th century during the Ottoman Empire. According to The New York Times, the evacuated houses were built in the 1950s by the United Nations for refugees who had fled west Jerusalem during the 1948 war. When Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan and united the city, after the 1967 Six Day War, the families were permitted to stay on as tenants. At some point, they stopped paying rent having become convinced - we know not by whom - that the Jews' deed to the land was a forgery.

It took a large force of police to carry out the evictions in the face of opposition from the residents, left-wing Jewish supporters and foreign demonstrators.

Coming on the heels of the controversy surrounding the nearby Shepherd Hotel complex, which was also purchased to create Jewish residential housing, the evictions drew worldwide condemnation. The international community says Israel has no legal claim to east Jerusalem; nor does it accept Israeli sovereignty over west Jerusalem.

Israel finds itself in the anomalous position in which not a single nation recognizes Jerusalem as our capital. All foreign embassies are located in Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, European governments, with Britain often in the lead, have invested vast resources, sometimes surreptitiously, in promoting Arab claims to east Jerusalem (and the West Bank), bankrolling organizations, many staffed with Israelis and sporting Hebrew names, whose mandate is, in effect, to promote EU policy vis-à-vis Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The British Consulate in Jerusalem explicitly denies that Israeli courts have jurisdiction over east Jerusalem. Its diplomats term the Arab connection to Sheikh Jarrah "ancient."

Media coverage of the issue has been overwhelmingly supportive of the Palestinian position.

THERE happens to be another side to this argument.

Put aside, for our purposes here, the ancient Jewish connection to Jerusalem and Zion's centrality to Jewish civilization over the millennia.

Begin instead with the fact that there is no neatly delineated "east" and "west" Jerusalem - one section housing Arabs and the other Jews. Jerusalem beyond the Green Line is home to some 200,000 Jews and 270,000 Arabs, though 66 percent of all residents are Jewish. The city is built on a range of hills and valleys. Arab and Jewish neighborhoods crisscross in the north, east and southern sectors.

Sheikh Jarrah, in the northeast, is strategically situated on the way to the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University. During the 1948 war, Arabs massacred 78 doctors and others who were heading by convoy to Hadassah hospital, also on Mount Scopus. Today, in addition to the hospital (which serves both Israelis and Palestinians) and the university (which has thousands of Arab students), the area is also home to Israel's police headquarters and Justice Ministry.

Staunchly right-wing Orthodox groups have been competing with Gulf Arabs in the quest to purchase properties in the area. (Israel does not forbid Arabs from buying land in Jerusalem.)

In this particular rivalry, we side with the Jewish groups, even if this newspaper is sometimes put-off by the way they see the world, because whatever arrangements may ultimately be negotiated for sharing Jerusalem, mainstream Israelis will insist on unfettered access to Mount Scopus via Sheikh Jarrah.

As far as British claims of an "ancient" Arab connection to the area, Nadav Shragai convincingly documents, in the latest "Jerusalem Issue Brief" published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (www.jcpa.org), that the Jewish connection to what is today Sheikh Jarrah predates the founding of both Christianity and Islam.

That said, we are not enthusiastic about the purchase of property or the construction of Jewish residential housing in heavily Arab neighborhoods when not dictated by strategic imperatives.

Jews and Arabs are destined to share this city. Both peoples would be wise to avoid actions that exacerbate tensions.

Gays murdered in Tel Aviv

Wild weed


We do not know who carried out the ghastly shooting at a gay youth support center in Tel Aviv Saturday night. Some in the media and in the political establishment have jumped to the conclusion that the rampage was motivated by homophobia. Others speculate that the shooter may have been a homosexual with a grudge. We reserve judgment about the identity of the perpetrator; but like most Israelis from across the political and religious spectrum, we condemn this unprecedented assault.

Foremost, our condolences go to the families of Nir Katz, 26, from Givatayim, and Liz Tarbishi, 17, from Holon. Ten of the wounded remain hospitalized, several in intensive care, and we wish them a full and speedy recovery.

For some of the families, Saturday night's bloodbath was a double trauma since there were parents who did not know about the sexual orientation of their children.

The emotional nature of the reaction to this vile attack is understandable. MK Nitzan Horowitz of Meretz, who is gay, participated in an impromptu rally to protest "incitement" against the gay and lesbian community. Granted, there is prejudice against gays in Israel. Yet gay activists readily grant that Israel is one of the world's most progressive countries in terms of equality for sexual minorities, and in some respects - military service, for instance - far more advanced than many other Western societies.

Not only did major political figures rush to condemn Saturday night's attack, but even the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi, Shas Knesset faction - some of whose members have been vitriolic against gays - issued a statement condemning the violence and calling for the capture and prosecution of the attacker.

THROUGH the haze and shock of Saturday night's attack, it is important to maintain perspective. Whoever did it - gay or straight, observant or secular - was a wild weed and not indicative of their community.

Gays in Israel are not oppressed. There is no culture of marginalization. While community standards vary from place to place, gays in metropolitan Tel Aviv are valued citizens. The TA municipality helps fund the annual gay parade. Even in comparatively conservative Jerusalem, an openly gay man, Sa'ar Nethaniel, served on the municipal council in the previous government. It is true that the gay parade invariably generates local ultra-Orthodox opposition. In 2005 a haredi man from Kiryat Sefer stabbed three participants at Jerusalem's gay parade. Not only was he convicted of attempted murder, but ultra-Orthodox leaders have incrementally toned down the vociferousness of their anti-parade agitation. While in deference to local norms, gay pride events in Jerusalem have become relatively (and appropriately) understated. Mutual - albeit tacit - accommodation, backed by the Jerusalem Open House and the mainstream haredi leadership, is a fact of life.

Tolerance toward gays is nothing new. As early as 1953 the attorney-general of Israel issued instructions not to prosecute gay activities. In 1992, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1988 was expanded to prohibit anti-gay discrimination in employment. In 1994, the Supreme Court recognized same-sex partner benefits in the private sector; in 1997 these were extended to the public sector. In 2000, the age of legal consensual homosexual relations was lowered to 16.

Same-sex couples can today legally adopt children. Gay marriages abroad can be registered as legal in Israel. Knesset legislation provides gays with enhanced civil liberties protections. Many municipalities do likewise. Moreover, gay life - far from being delegitimized - is a not infrequent theme in our cinema (The Bubble, Yossi & Jagger), music (Dana International), theater (Passing the Love of Women) and literature.

Contrast the situation in Israel to gay life in neighboring Arab and Muslim countries.

In Iran, homosexuality is outlawed; sodomy is a capital crime. The mullahs endeavor to make the lives of gays miserable. Scores have been flogged and others executed. Gays are not as relentlessly persecuted in Saudi Arabia, but sodomy is punishable by death. In relatively tolerant Turkey, gay life is not criminalized, but neither is there much forbearance for outward displays of homosexuality.

Saturday night's carnage in Tel Aviv is heartbreaking. It is not - at least based on what we know now - cause for national consternation over the place of gays in Israeli society.

Refugees in Israel

Meant to post this before Shabbat but ran out of time....


Let the children stay

The prospect of the Jewish state expelling 2,800 children whose parents are foreign workers or illegal immigrants tugs at the heartstrings.

An authorized foreign worker who gives birth in this country loses her right to work here; illegal immigrants shouldn't be here in the first place. But the fact is that hundreds of their Hebrew-speaking children call Israel home. Interior Minister Eli Yishai would be doing the right thing to let them stay. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took a step in the right direction yesterday by delaying their expulsion for at least three months.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the system that brings over workers from abroad to do the jobs most of us do not want - home care for the elderly and infirm, back-breaking farm labor, or construction.

Until Yasser Arafat launched the second intifada in 2000, the farm and construction jobs had gone mostly to Palestinian Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza. But that conflict forced Israel to turn to Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe to meet its labor needs.

Yet, from the get-go, potential foreign workers could not simply apply for, say, a four-year work visa at the Embassy of Israel closest to them. Instead, they were "imported" by licensed brokers - not a few of them rapacious and unscrupulous. There is money to be made in bringing foreigners to Israel, and the sooner one batch goes and another can be brought over, the more money the brokers make.

Most workers pay these middlemen a hefty fee for the opportunity to work here. That means many are in debt the moment they arrive. While in Israel, the foreigners are indentured to their employers by arcane rules, which provide them with little protection. Legal workers can't simply move to a different job, or to one with better conditions. If a caregiver's patient dies, the worker has few options, other than leaving the country, even if she or he only recently arrived. As the Post reported on Wednesday, the Interior Ministry inexplicably shut down a database through which workers with time remaining on their visas could learn about other openings. Thus, through no fault of their own, legal workers can suddenly find themselves illegal.

On Tuesday, two presumably legal Chinese workers held a protest atop a construction crane to object to their treatment. Next day, authorities arrested four brokers who had obtained work permits under false pretenses - ostensibly to provide caregivers for the blind, but in fact to meet needs for janitors and in construction (where new permits have been frozen).

We don't even know for sure how many illegals are in the country - estimates vary between 80,000 and 300,000. Authorities tried to keep most of them out of the main population centers, but under legal challenge reversed their "Hadera-Gedera" policy.

ADVOCATING against the children's deportation is easy. But we also support allowing foreigners who came here legally, and developed a strong attachment to this country, the opportunity to apply for resident alien status; thus providing them with the rights and obligations of citizenship, save for voting and military service. And we want to see their Israeli-born children become naturalized citizens in every sense.

We have less sympathy for those who came here illegally, or under false pretenses. After due process, and allowing for extenuating circumstances, we favor repatriating most illegal immigrants to their home countries.

As for those illegals, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, who are genuine (pending UN certification) asylum-seekers and cannot be deported under international law, we urge the UN to move speedily to help resettle these people in countries where their lives will not be in danger. Where appropriate, perhaps some of these refugees could be offered resident alien status.

We urge authorities: Rather than proceeding with a draconian Knesset bill that proposes treating illegal immigrants as if they were security infiltrators, invest your energies in building a security barrier along the Negev-Sinai border to keep both infiltrators and illegal aliens out.

Long-term, Israel needs to secure its borders, liberalize its naturalization procedures and, separately, revamp the way foreign workers reach our shores.

Tiny Israel cannot serve as a life-boat for millions of desperate refugees fleeing their poverty-stricken and war-torn countries. Yet it has a moral obligation to deal humanely - and with Jewish compassion - with those who are here, regardless of how they arrived.