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GOOD NEWS FROM ISRAEL

Israel welcomes individual tourists back into the country

By Abigail Klein Leichman ISRAEL21c

This is the moment so many travelers – and Israel’s tourism industry – have been waiting for since the pandemic shut out much of foreign travel through Ben-Gurion International Airport in March 2020.

Effective November 1, Israel is reopening for individual travelers from all countries, without the need to obtain an entry permit – only a negative PCR test taken up to 72 hours before departure, and an online Inbound Passenger Statement.

Each entering tourist also must present a vaccination certificate less than six months old, certifying that the bearer was vaccinated with Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, J&J, Sinovac or Sinopharm; Sputnik V will be recognized from November 15.

Unvaccinated, recovered travelers may not enter Israel from the United States but can enter from the European Union with a digitized recovery certificate from the past six months (no such document currently is available in the United States).

Incoming travelers will no longer have to get a serological test to obtain an early release from quarantine. They will take a PCR test upon arrival at the airport, and may leave quarantine as soon as the negative result is received — normally within 12 hours.

Until now, individual tourists could enter Israel only under certain conditions, with special permission. Group travel restrictions were relaxed in recent months.

To understand the impact of the tourism slowdown, in September 2020 there were 15,100 tourists entries compared to 405,000 in September 2019. From January through September 2021, there were 243,500 tourist entries into Israel, compared to 782,700 in the corresponding period in 2020. A record 4.55 million tourists arrived in Israel in 2019.

Don’t consider submitting fraudulent forms: Foreigners caught with forged documents will be refused entry to Israel for five years.

Foreigners who test positive for COVID on arrival or during their visit to Israel will be required to quarantine in a coronavirus hotel; those who refuse or who break isolation also will be refused entry for five years.

For further details and updates, check the websites of the Israeli Ministry of Health and the Population and Immigration Authority.

Ethiopians

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the United Nations and aid groups, and numerous war crimes have been documented on both sides, including frequent rapes of women and children. Recently, the president of Ethiopia encouraged civilians to arm themselves.

In the 30 years since Israel covertly airlifted more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to the country as part of Operation Solomon, more than 8,000 Jews officially recognized by the Israeli government have remained stranded in Ethiopia, their pleas for asylum were placed in limbo, even as some have had family members resettle in Israel.

The war has particularly compounded problems for those Jews stuck in Ethiopia. Activists in Israel say the actual number of Jews in Ethiopia requiring asylum is closer to 12,000; there are also Ethiopian Jewish tribes not recognized by Israel that seek to remain in their country while practicing Judaism.

Most of the remaining Ethiopian Jews are concentrated in the capital city of Addis Ababa, which is also a major site of the fighting. Many are scared about a potential total collapse of the country’s government.

Surfside firefighters visit Israel to train with rescue specialists who aided them

An IDF Home Front Command mission member searching for survivors in Surfside, Florida, June 2021.

By ISRAEL21c Staff

Last June, following the deadly collapse of a 12-story apartment building in Surfside, Florida, a team of Israeli disaster relief specialists flew over to help.

Earlier this month, 15 firefighters from Florida, Ohio and Virginia who’d worked with the Israelis at the scene came to Israel for five days.

They participated in a rescue training drill with the IDF Home Front Command, conducted a joint review of the Surfside rescue operation, visited an Iron Dome antimissile defense installation and met with officials in the Gaza-border city of Sderot.

The Israeli and American colleagues hope to craft a “rescue doctrine” to be available for disaster specialists around the world. The Home Front Command has requested another meeting of the two sides next year to further this goal.

Col. (Res.) Golan Vach, commander of the National Rescue Unit in the Home Front Command, told The Times of Israel that he invited the American responders to Israel so that the two sides could learn from one another.

Vach noted that the Americans brought to the rescue operation advanced equipment, logistical and organizational excellence and a comprehensive manual of instructions.

The Israelis contributed their well-honed ability to gather critical intelligence at the scene to map out where to search for victims. This methodology significantly shortens the time needed to find trapped individuals, Vach said.

Brandon Webb, program manager for Florida Task Force One and battalion chief for Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue, called his Israeli counterparts “Great people, highly trained and dedicated to what they do. I haven’t met any of them that I wouldn’t consider a friend.”

Israelis join new World Health Network to eliminate COVID

By Abigail Klein Leichman ISRAEL21c

Meir Rubin, executive director of Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum, is one of 30 co-authors of an Oct. 30 article in The Lancet declaring the formation of the World Health Network (WHN) and its Global Summit to End Pandemics, which took place last month.

An international grassroots task force in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHN includes independent scientific advisory and advocacy teams and citizens’ action to achieve progressive elimination of the disease globally.

The initiative is spearheaded by physicist Prof. Yaneer BarYam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute in Boston.

“Our connected world is vulnerable to pandemics, and we must learn how to stop them. With COVID, the main challenge is to make a decision to achieve elimination locally and to use all of the tools that we have learned from in many parts of the world to achieve it,” said Bar-Yam.

The American-born son of Israeli parents, he analyzes the origins and impacts of market crashes, social unrest, ethnic violence, military conflict and pandemics, and the structure and dynamics of social networks.

“Different communities have learned how to suppress the outbreak. We can combine those tools together, technological ones including but not limited to vaccinations, and social actions,” Bar-Yam said.

The Lancet article notes that the COVID-19 pandemic has cost more than 4 million lives, left millions of people with persistent symptoms (long COVID), and has devastated disadvantaged communities in particular.

“The tragedy is that much of this harm was preventable, as shown early on by many AsiaPacific countries that pursued elimination of COVID-19 and protected both their public health and economies,” the authors wrote.

“The rest of the world can still work towards elimination…. Elimination means bringing cases down to sufficiently low numbers, so that no community transmission occurs for extended periods of time. Outbreaks might occur but will be rapidly detected and controlled. Despite the manifest success of this approach, many governments rejected it outright, and after repeated lockdowns and substantial losses to life and economy, these governments now speak of learning to live with the virus.”

WHN members “aim to achieve elimination by assembling rigorous scientific evidence and guidelines; sharing experience and expertise between countries; coordinating international strategies and actions; empowering citizen actions to improve public health, support vaccine uptake, and shape policy; addressing the role of inequality, inequity, and marginalization in health; campaigning for vaccine equity and sharing; and challenging misinformation, nationalism, and exceptionalism.”

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