Jonathan Sacerdoti

From the hilltop viewpoint at Misgav Am, Israel’s northernmost kibbutz in the Upper Galilee, the view into southern Lebanon is a panorama of uncertainty. Less than a full day after Assad was finally defeated in Syria, I stand at and look down at the rubble of the Lebanese buildings destroyed in the recent fighting, as close to the Syrian border as the IDF will allow. Beside my feet, spent bullet casings remind me that less than two weeks ago this peaceful spot was a frontline position. The shell of a bombed-out nearby community viewpoint serves as a silent witness to the RPG attacks Hezbollah regularly launched on civilian homes and buildings since it started its war on Israel in October 2023.

The death of Yahya Sinwar, the top military commander of Hamas, is an important and symbolic moment in Israel’s ongoing war against the terror group. His elimination was finally made official by an evening statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, following hours of rumours fuelled by the circulation of unmistakable pictures of his corpse. Yet not one rocket was fired into Israel by Hamas in response. This is what progress looks like. The man who threatened to ‘take down the border with Israel and tear out their hearts from their bodies’ is now dead, marking a critical juncture in the conflict that reverberates beyond the battlefield and carries profound implications for the region’s future.

Sipping an iced coffee in a Tel Aviv café this week, it felt like it was 2018 again. Nobody wears a face mask, tables are close together and there’s no hand gel in sight. Very few people one meets even talk about Covid-19. Though a tiny increase in the occurrence of the Indian variant has been noted in recent days, Israel is rightly proud of its vaccination and mass immunity success. It is therefore surprising that Israel’s offer to advance over one million Pfizer vaccines to the Palestinians has been rejected by the Palestinian Authority only hours after they initially accepted the deal. Many countries are still grappling with the ethical dilemma of when to offer their own supply of vaccines abroad to help others; few are expecting such offers to be rejected.

In the eighties, we were warned to beware an easily spread, deadly virus. The government’s ominous HIV adverts told us not to 'die of ignorance'. Thus a generation was educated through fear how to avoid infection by practicing safer sex and avoiding contact with the blood of those who are positive.  While those messages are still important today, HIV no longer represents the death sentence it once did. Still a life-altering and permanent disease, it can now be managed in a way that means people often live full lives with HIV, rather than die early because of it. No successful vaccination has been developed for HIV, but other medical developments helped to change the prognosis for those who contract it.

Are Black people and Asians the same? Are they different from other ethnic minorities? What about Jews? And who do we include when we talk about Asians? Korean, Thai and Chinese people, or those from Afghanistan, Pakistan and India? Does ‘Asian’ refer to a set of skin colours or geographical locations? And what exactly is BAME? One of the hallmarks of a functional democracy is to protect the needs of minority groups. As well as ensuring they are not unfairly discriminated against, we must also make certain adjustments to accommodate their specific needs. But modern sensibilities and sociological fashions risk lumping groups together and simply emphasising differences. The effect of this can be division and confusion rather than fairness and harmony.