‘Noble people’

TEL AVIV – Israel is one country where President Duterte will find no need to cuss and flash the dirty finger. In fact if he visits, he’s bound to receive a warm welcome from admirers and from his counterpart, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is also no big fan of the United Nations.

People here understand that there are circumstances when the use of lethal force is justified. And while there’s a marked difference between killing for national defense and executing a drug addict, the Israelis aren’t going to tell Dirty Rody how to run his country.

Israel not only will stay out of Duterte’s business, but is also ready to offer assistance and improve bilateral cooperation in many aspects.

This is because the past looms large in the Israeli psyche, and the Jews appreciate two things in particular that Filipinos have done. One is that the Philippines was among the first UN members to recognize the Jewish state upon its creation.

The second, as has been reported in the Philippines, was Manuel L. Quezon’s instruction to the country’s diplomatic missions during World War II to issue visas to an initial 10,000 Jews fleeing the Holocaust. MLQ set aside an agricultural area in Mindanao to accommodate up to 35,000 Jewish settlers. But because of the war, only about 1,200 actually made it to Manila and settled in Marikina. Still, this is immortalized in the “Open Doors Monument” that was unveiled in 2009 at the Holocaust Memorial Park in this country, along a boulevard dedicated to the “righteous” around the world who helped the Jews in their hour of dire need.

Last Friday when I visited the monument in Rishon Lezion, Holocaust survivor Asher Cohen told me that Filipinos were also the only foreigners in the world to protest – through a rally in front of the German embassy in Manila in 1938 – against the atrocities perpetrated on Kristallnacht, when Nazis vandalized, torched and destroyed Jewish homes, schools, businesses and synagogues, killing about 100 people. Many of the thousands arrested during the pogrom were sent to concentration camps.

Cohen, now 79, was just four years old when his family, including five siblings, were exterminated in Romania. So he has deep appreciation for MLQ’s move – the “very noble gesture of a president of a very noble people.”

“I as a Holocaust survivor, for me it was very important,” Cohen told me at the memorial. “We will never forget that.”

Israelis also like the work ethic of Filipinos working here, about 40,000 of whom are caregivers.

One of the first three foreign diplomats to call on Duterte following his election victory was Israeli Ambassador Effie Ben Matityau.

* * * Mendy Gonda of Asia Tours, who visited Davao last October to lure Filipino tourists to his country, is a Duterte fan. Mendy recalled telling Duterte – at the time still a non-candidate – that he would win the presidency.

Duterte reportedly visited Israel when he was a local executive. He may want to visit again, not just to exchange anti-UN sentiments with Netanyahu, but also to observe Israel’s continuing struggles for peace – a priority issue for Duterte.

Mendy, hands down the most competent tour guide I have ever met, took me to the enclave of Israeli-Arabs in Akko and to Haifa, where Jewish and Muslim Israelis are living in peaceful co-existence. In Akko I met “activity theater” director Moni Yossef, who trains young actors and presents plays that revolve around that theme.

“There’s a fascist in each of us,” Moni, 59, told me. “The task is to tame it.” He wants theater to serve as a bridge promoting understanding. “If you don’t know someone, you’re afraid of him and you begin to hate.”

Mendy told me that the Islamic enclave in Akko has become progressive in the past five years. “If you have nothing to lose, you hate. The secret (to peace) is to give people something to lose.”

Haifa is the first place in Israel where Jews and Muslims (plus a Christian minority) showed they could live together in peace. It’s such a picturesque city it was surreal to consider that from the top of the Baha’i Shrine, I could see part of war-torn Lebanon.

* * * Mendy, whose parents also survived the Holocaust, told me that lovely Haifa is within striking distance of rockets from Lebanon.

It’s my first visit to Israel and I’m pleasantly surprised at how different the country is from the impression that I have formed from watching too much foreign news. And it’s amazing how the country has achieved such prosperity in a hostile neighborhood in just 68 years, with many years spent fighting wars.

Mark Sofer, deputy director general and head of the Asia-Pacific Division in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told me in Jerusalem that he sees a new “security architecture” germinating in the Middle East, with Israel no longer at the heart of security concerns of its Arab neighbors. There are also countries that are starting to see Israel as a partner or at least a source of expertise in effectively fighting terrorism.

Still, this is a country that is used to armed conflict, and will not let its guard down anytime soon. As one government official told me, when I asked if security had improved, “Yes, but people don’t look very far ahead. There are always challenges.”

Despite the prosperity, Israelis are keenly aware of how fragile their peace can be, and personal safety is never far from their minds. Mendy stresses that Lebanon’s Hezbollah has 120,000 rockets trained on Israel. It takes just two and a half minutes, he told me, for a missile to strike Tel Aviv from Damascus, Syria, and less than five minutes from Baghdad, Iraq.

About two million of this Jewish state’s population of eight million is Israeli-Arab. In Akko last Thursday and then in another predominantly Muslim village called Abu Ghosh, on my way back to Tel Aviv from the Dead Sea during the Sabbath, Jews and the Christian minority packed Muslim restaurants.

The crime rate in this country is impressively low. In Tel Aviv, women walk in the streets near my hotel in string bikinis on their way to the beach (all beaches are free for public use), with no concern about being molested or mugged.

While the two countries’ problems are different, President Duterte will likely understand Israelis’ feelings of being misunderstood by the world, and of the foreign media having an unbending narrative about the Jewish state. Bibi Netanyahu also doesn’t relish foreign criticism of his government’s human rights record.

“I like Duterte,” Mendy told me. “He can be our prime minister.”