Dr Galia Barhava-Monteith is an organisational culture specialist, focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and has lived in New Zealand for the past 30 years. Photo / Supplied
OPINION:
I have just spent close to six weeks in Israel, where my family lives. I spent time with my 91-year-old father who lost his wife of 40 years in tragic circumstances in 2020. Like many Kiwis born offshore, being cut off from my family for two years has been very difficult. But that is not what this opinion piece, written from MIQ in Christchurch, is about.
I am an organisational culture specialist, focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and have lived in New Zealand for the past 30 years. I'm often asked about Israel's incredible success story as the 'start-up nation', and what lessons New Zealand can learn to help transform our economy away from being reliant on agriculture, tourism, and immigration. I want to provide a 'lived-experience' perspective on how Israel is managing the pandemic, and how its approach may be directly linked to the culture that made its economic and social transformation possible.
Israel is a tiny and crowded country – the size of Northland but with about 10 million people. Its population is diverse with many disenfranchised and hard-to reach groups. For example, Israel's large ultra-orthodox Jewish community resisted much of the secular state's efforts to engage throughout the Covid pandemic, especially on vaccinations.
According to the Israel Ministry of Health's Covid website, there have been 8247 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. On January 11, 41,154 people were diagnosed with Covid, and there were 231 new hospitalisations of severe and critical patients over the previous seven days.
Having not been back for some years, it struck me that Israel is no longer a 'start-up' nation: it is now nothing short of a hi-tech kingdom. According to The Marker, Israel's premier business publication, 2021 was their best hi-tech year yet. Whereas in previous years mostly the founders and senior executives benefited from the exits, in the last couple of years the trickle-down effect has changed the scene such that employees are substantially benefiting from sales, through shared ownership schemes. In 2021 more than 80 privately held hi-tech companies were purchased for nearly US$10 billion; more than 20 companies were listed on Wall Street (raising about US$11 billion), and private money raised for Israeli hi-tech companies is estimated to have passed the US$20 billion mark. The large global tech companies are also present in Israel, including Google with about 1600 employees.
The trickle-down effect is of most interest to me. Because hi-tech and knowledge workers are so hard to come by, many start-ups are giving their employees options at the outset, the conditions for all hi-tech workers are phenomenal, and there are many, diverse efforts to bring people from marginalised communities into the industry, including the Arab population and ultraorthodox women. This is a great thing for a country plagued with so many socio-political challenges. The process starts early: Israel has dedicated hi-tech curricula in some primary schools, specifically in marginalised areas.
So, what has all that got to do with how Israel is navigating Covid? Well, I believe that everything, including a nation's response to the pandemic, needs to be seen in a broader context. I hope that by reflecting on how Israel is managing Covid, I can provide food for thought that is relevant to New Zealand's more insular approach, which has been very successful in minimising the direct Covid death rate but may have unintended longer-term consequences. It's not that one nation 'got it right' and another 'got it wrong'. It's about enriching the picture of possibilities.
Israel, according to its Corona Cabinet, has three pillars guiding its Covid response: health, economic wellbeing, and democracy. But for me there are three cultural and behavioural aspects of their response that stand out as being intrinsically connected to Israel's success in transforming its economy over the past 30 years.
1. Speed and agility
Things move fast in Israel, and its response to Covid reflects that. You may recall that Israel was first to vaccinate its people. I had to show my vaccination pass before boarding the plane. My compulsory Covid test was done at the airport, and I received the results within 12 hours while I was isolating at home. Everything is done through texts and links to constantly updated websites that reflect the most up-to-date information. For example, I couldn't get my booster before I departed New Zealand (I have an auto-immune condition and was vaccinated in June). Because I no longer have the compulsory health insurance in Israel, I needed to find out where I could get my booster. I was sent a link that updates daily for vaccination sites. After Omicron emerged, there were dozens more places to get vaccinated for everyone including those like me. And next week my 91-year-old dad will be getting his 4th vaccine.
There are no traffic lights or alert levels in Israel. Instead, it responds in real time to data, and pivots swiftly as it did when it was first to close the borders to African countries after the emergence of Omicron. The counter factual was that when I arrived and things were well under control after the surge of Delta and prior to Omicron, it had also opened the borders for tourists, and decreased the home isolation time from three days to 24 hours or a negative PCR test, whichever came first.
Speed and agility do lead to confusion, and there's certainly confusion currently with respect to changing instructions and restrictions regarding Omicron, but life in Israel does continue as close to normal as possible. Israel's government seems to have pushed through public anxiety, taken what it deems necessary public health measures (including shutting the borders to non-Israelis) but to retain as much openness to the global economy as possible. Having endured lengthy lockdowns under Bibi Netanyahu's regime, Israelis are highly unlikely to abide by another lockdown. And as anyone who ever worked in hi-tech will tell you, living with some anxiety, a lot of ambiguity, ever-changing requirements and constantly changing data is just part of the game. And when you lean in to it, it is also what breeds innovation and transformation.
2. Media and communication
Netanyahu held daily 8pm press conferences while he was in power (the main news in Israel is at 8pm), and the Israeli public now appears allergic to daily press conferences by its politicians. Instead, the media reports on daily case updates from the MoH and pursues its own investigative agenda.
There are many, varied voices sought by the media. I couldn't single out any key experts, as so many are interviewed and questioned rigorously by reporters (some might call it aggressively). The commentators are mainly health experts with an action bias, including the heads of hospitals, senior leaders of the compulsory health insurers, IDF medical experts, specialists, and international experts.
The ability to rigorously question and challenge, is part of the Israeli DNA and a big part of its hi-tech success story. Challenge is a necessary ingredient in innovation and transformation. Being able to ask "Why do we do it this way? Can we make it better?" is encouraged in an economy that wants to transform itself into a knowledge economy. Ideas raised through this process have been quickly adopted into the official Covid response.
3. Looking after ex-pat citizens
Now to the hardest and most polarising topic: how Israel treats its offshore citizens. After a brief time at the beginning of the pandemic when Netanyahu closed Israel's borders, the country has never effectively shut itself off to its own citizens. From the outset, the isolation model was home isolation. To be clear, Israel's borders were never flung open either. Except for a very brief period, foreign passport holders have struggled to visit Israel. Israel also stops citizens from going to 'red countries' to stem infection. The period of home isolation is constantly changing in line with the circumstances (and as a reflection of its agile approach), and there are many tech solutions in support of this.
I think there are three fundamental values that implicitly influenced Israel's approach to its offshore citizens throughout the pandemic.
First, citizenship is seen as a fundamental human and democratic right for Israelis. To Israelis, citizenship is an integral part of their identity, the knowledge that no matter how hard things get offshore, you can always return home, and nothing and no one can ever stop you. It is unthinkable for them that fellow citizens could be effectively prevented from coming home.
Second, family is everything for Israelis. After being kept apart from family during the high holidays of 2020, under Netanyahu, there's no way Israelis will put up with being separated from their loved ones. Nor would they tolerate others being separated. When I was there, I experienced nothing but love and warmth and delight that I was able to finally see my dad.
Third, as the hi-tech kingdom that they are, Israel understands that once vaccinations, testing, rapid testing and effective treatments were introduced – and as the rest of the world moved away from being Zoom-based – it would be imperative to stay globally connected. And being connected means seeing people in person, building those all-important human relationships.
There is no singular right way to manage a pandemic. It is scary and chaotic. As a passionate New Zealander who also respects and appreciates what my country of origin is doing right now, I do see its approach as intrinsically connected to the social and economic transformation of the past 30 years.
I believe that how New Zealand approaches the pandemic response in 2022 could have detrimental and un-intended long-term consequences if we don't pivot and innovate in our response as rapidly as the virus itself is changing.
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