Andres Vosman: There are things Estonia could learn from Israel

While Estonia can follow Israel's example in economic matters and those of national security, the country's unique relationship with the U.S. cannot be copied by others, Estonian Ambassador to Israel Andres Vosman tells ERR in an interview.
How is the weather in Tel Aviv?
It has gotten very warm very quickly. Today it is over 30 degrees [Celsius] and slightly cloudy. Traffic is back to its usual congestion and everything seems to be returning to normal.
What does "normal" even mean in Israel? If you read the news, it seems that Israel is constantly in some kind of military emergency or state of war. What does normality look like through the eyes of an ordinary person in Israel?
In many ways, it means exactly that — there has been one conflict after another here for many years. I would say that a large part of society is tired of the constant state of crisis, but at the same time, the overwhelming majority of people feel there is no alternative. They believe the wars have been imposed on Israel, that Israel is acting in self-defense and especially now, in the context of Donald Trump's strong support, they hope to fundamentally reshape the Middle East.
How successful they will be is another matter. But yes, people are exhausted on the one hand and have become very hardened on the other. Even during the most recent 40-day war alone, it was impressive to watch from the sidelines how society and the state continued to function. There was no panic and life went on. That said, there is a strong feeling that there is no alternative.
Looking at history, it is both easy and in another sense difficult to understand that since the creation of its state in November 1947, Israel has, in one way or another, constantly been at war with its Arab neighbors. While preparing for this interview, I looked at the list of wars and it is so long that it does not even fit on the screen. Things have been very difficult in recent years from Israel's perspective. Still, relations have improved with several Arab countries with which Israel historically either had no relations at all or only relations at the level of armed conflict.
Yes, the Abraham Accords and the normalization of relations with certain Arab countries that came with them were an important development. Israeli strategic thinkers are certainly still calculating what would be needed, for example, for relations with Saudi Arabia to be normalized and for the wave of the Abraham Accords to continue.
We know that this may be somewhat more difficult under the current Israeli government, but many believe it is crucial for Israel's future.
Yes, the past few years have been unusual and intense. Over the last two and a half years, Israel has lost well over 1,000 soldiers killed in action and that loss is being felt.
Israeli society is used to reservists occasionally being called up to go into actual combat and they do. In that sense, there is probably nothing new about it.
No, there is nothing new about that. You could say that Israeli society is highly militarized. There is universal conscription for both men and women. Men serve for three years and women for two. There is also the possibility of alternative civilian service.
Anyone who has been to Israel probably knows that it is completely normal to see assault rifles with loaded magazines in public. Weapons and uniforms are everywhere. The Israel Defense Forces are held in very high regard.
When I came to Israel last year, I asked what the situation was with veterans and how much importance they are given. I asked whether there was anything like Veterans Day as there is in the United States where I had previously worked and where veterans are highly respected and people thank them for their service on Veterans Day.
I was told that there is nothing like that here because everyone is a veteran and there is no point in patting one another on the back.
When I say everyone, it must of course be acknowledged that ultra-Orthodox Jews largely do not participate in Israel's armed defense. That is one of the major and painful issues here.
Perhaps the most interesting possible development in Israel's history would be if, for the first time since 1947, there were a period of several years in which Israel did not have to fight a war with any of its neighbors. Is that likely?
There was some hope of that six or seven weeks ago when the war with Iran began. There were many headlines and slogans here saying that this was the war that would, for a time, bring the other wars to an end as well. At the moment, that does not seem to be the case. It is still too early to predict the outcome of the war with Iran or to declare winners and losers. At the moment, the situation is, to put it mildly, unclear.
What is happening on Israel's northern border in the direction of Lebanon with Hezbollah is a reminder that the wars around Israel are not over. The Houthis in Yemen were surprisingly quiet in the context of the war with Iran. Gaza Strip was also relatively quiet and Hamas had largely been brought to its knees, so perhaps nothing more could have been expected from there.
But yes, it seems we will have to wait a while longer for the war that ends all wars.
The big question, of course, concerns the millions of people living in territories controlled by Hamas and other Palestinians. As long as those people remain in their current situation, it seems inevitable that new fighters, hatred and organizations that could turn against the state of Israel will continue to emerge. Was there a sense a month or six weeks ago, or even last year, that the ongoing low-intensity conflict between Palestinians and Israel could somehow be resolved?
The hope is that with very forceful leadership from the United States, Hamas will be pushed far enough into a corner that it gives up its weapons, which would make it possible to move forward with a peace plan for the Gaza Strip and create a new normal there. As we know, under Donald Trump's peace plan, there are a number of points that are supposed to lead toward a normalization of the situation in Gaza and, in the more distant future, perhaps also in the West Bank.
Although Hamas is not currently prepared to give up its weapons completely and there is still sporadic resistance, broadly speaking it must be said that the issue of Gaza has faded from the agenda and is not discussed much because the focus is understandably on Iran and Lebanon.
That hope may have been greater outside Israel. If one tries to characterize the Israeli public mood, there is in fact a sense of disappointment. The hope or expectation of having side-by-side states with Arabs or Palestinians has declined significantly. If you look at public opinion polls, support has fallen since October 7, 2023 when Hamas carried out its attack against Israel. Even the political forces that once spoke very clearly about a two-state solution have now lost support and you do not hear much about it here anymore.
Instead, what remains is a kind of forced coexistence and a very clear emphasis on speaking from a position of strength. For now, dreams of a more distant peace are no longer really on the agenda.
Watching events in the Middle East through the media, one could be left with the impression that even if the United States were able to reach some kind of agreement with Iran, the main problem seems to be that after the military campaign there is no longer anyone to talk to. But if there were a regime change or an agreement with a new regime, then the money, direction and leadership that have driven anti-Israel forces for decades would disappear: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and who knows who else, all of whom have been encouraged by Iran. Is that a logical and credible scenario?
I think that is indeed a credible scenario. If Iran changes fundamentally, gives up its desire to destroy the state of Israel and abandons its desire to support all of its regional proxies — the most significant of which is Hezbollah in Lebanon on Israel's northern border — then of course reality for Israel would change dramatically.
If we remember the eve of the war with Iran, that was in fact one of Israel's three main demands: that Iran stop financing and supporting its proxies. It is debatable how much Hamas was directly supported and supplied by Iran, but there was clearly a connection.
In some ways, Israel is very similar to Estonia, strange as that may sound. If we look at the map, both are small countries with the sea on one side and — broadly speaking — a hostile country or hostile countries on the other, which throughout history have repeatedly tried to occupy that small territory and carry out genocide or destruction against the people living there. Estonia has probably learned a great deal from Israel since regaining its independence, including receiving military advisers and weapons from Israel. But is it really a good example for Estonia? If I may ask somewhat bluntly, is it good study material?
I would venture to say that there are indeed things that Estonia can learn from Israel. The first example is certainly Israel's remarkable capacity for innovation. What is happening here in the technology sector is admirable. The economy has also continued to grow in recent years despite the wars.
Incidentally, today Israel's currency, the shekel, reached its strongest position against the dollar in 30 years. Israel's innovation could be a subject in itself and there is much to learn from it.
Among other things, one can also learn from the role of the Israel Defense Forces in shaping young men and women before they go to college because in Israel people generally complete their military service before university and talented individuals are often identified early and developed in a purposeful way.
Innovation is one subject, but everything related to the will to defend the country and the level of preparedness is another area from which we have much to learn. And we have learned. Contacts between the Estonian Defense Forces, the Ministry of Defense of Estonia and their Israeli counterparts have existed for many years and intelligence cooperation also functions.
When Israel is under strain, as it was on October 7 or during the June war with Iran, people do not leave. Instead, Jews from around the world want to get on the first flight back to Israel so they can be there and, if necessary, take up arms. That is something admirable to witness.
There are certainly things in Israel that we cannot accept, that do not suit us or do not align with our values, but that is completely natural. Friendly countries can also be critical of one another. So there are reasons for us in Europe to be critical about certain things, but there are also things we can learn from Israel.
If one wanted to be naive, one could ask whether perhaps Estonia could also learn from Israel how to manage relations with its biggest and most important ally. I mean the United States. I understand that the question is somewhat pointless because there are so many Jews in the United States and Israel's relationship with the United States is entirely different, but perhaps there is still something to pick up or imitate.
Perhaps there is, but I have not yet found the magic formula. Our situation and the situation of the Jewish community here are indeed incomparable. In the case of Donald Trump, we are probably dealing with the most pro-Israel American president in history. Israel clearly feels that support and friendship. It has even been measured — Trump is the most popular politician in Israel and Israel does not have the luxury of coming into conflict with him, at least not publicly.
However, Israel is very concerned about the trends we are seeing in Europe, but especially in the United States. Much has been written and measured about growing hostility toward Israel and not only hostility toward Israel and outright antisemitism, but also very strong criticism, including from within the Jewish community itself. The Jewish community in the United States has never been more polarized than it is today. Israel is watching that situation with great concern.
So even though, at the moment, it feels as though there is a favorable wind in the form of American support — something that is very clearly felt in the context of the most recent 40-day war — the long-term outlook is actually troubling. It seems to me that no magic formula has yet been found. There is a great deal of discussion about the idea that Israel itself must change.
Elections will be held at the end of the year. Perhaps there will then be a new government and a new prime minister. Perhaps Benjamin Netanyahu will leave the stage. That in itself would change things, but it is far from certain that the situation is really that simple.

When I look at the history of Israel and the United States, Donald Trump may indeed rank as one of the presidents who has shown the greatest interest in and support for Israel, but I cannot think of a single president in the 20th or 21st century who behaved in a very unsupportive way toward Israel.
That special relationship between the United States and Israel really only developed during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Before that, there was nothing quite like it.
But what about Richard Nixon's actions during the Six-Day War, which arguably saved the state of Israel?
Yes, Nixon was the first to take a very clear position on Israel. He was certainly the first, but that direct special relationship really began in the 1980s.
Turning back to Estonia now. The central question for us has become how Estonia should cope if our only and greatest hope is not NATO cooperation in general, but rather the United States as NATO's central military power. Israel has managed — whether in the example of Richard Nixon or in later examples up to the present day — to deal with the Americans in such a way that the United States always comes to help, no matter in what way or at what time. Again, the situations are very different, going back to biblical times, but could Estonia, the Baltic states or Eastern Europe have any hope of reaching a similar status?
I do not believe we will ever reach the same status, at least not under the current U.S. administration.
It seems to me that what we could learn from Israel is that we need to be more transactional. That is a word you hear often in the Middle East. You have your interests, I have my interests and that creates a reason to make deals.
Does that also require being more present?
Certainly, but it also requires having a very clear understanding of what is in our interests and perhaps being prepared, at least for a moment, to set values aside. I am not saying that this is the path for Estonia — after all, we are still a European country and come from a very different background than the Middle East — but that kind of transactional approach, pragmatism and shorter-term thinking are very common in the Middle East. The outlook here is very much driven by interests and, as we know, there is not much talk about values.
Continuing on the subject of values, I do not quite understand what is supposedly our problem with values or what the difference is between our values and Israel's. On the contrary, it seems that we have an extraordinary amount in common with Israel and the United States when it comes to values. Against that background, it is interesting to see what the rest of Europe is doing. If you look at attitudes toward Israel's self-defense and the wars Israel has fought in recent years — since October a few years ago — there are many countries in Europe where one gets the impression that it is not Hamas that attacked Israel, but rather that Israel is bullying a helpless and well-intentioned liberation movement in the Palestinian territories. Should Estonia really take the same position?
No, that is certainly not what I meant when I spoke about values.
I completely agree that there is a great deal of this black-and-white perception of Israel in the Western world and perhaps also a poor understanding of history — a kind of wishful thinking. On that issue, I do not disagree at all. By values, I was referring more to the broader use of force and perhaps also to thinking in terms of a longer-term vision, something that, to be honest, the current Israeli government does not offer very much of. The government is reactive and focused on the short term.
In Israel today, there is also a very clear tendency to tie itself politically to the American Republicans, without considering that the situation may be different in a few years. How wise that is is not for me to say, but before the last few years, Israel had never been a partisan issue in American domestic politics. Today, it clearly has become one. And, as we know, there are also strongly anti-Israel factions within the Republicans themselves.
By values, I also meant, among other things, what is happening in the West Bank — settler violence, which is an everyday occurrence.
But yes, to return to the original point, we certainly should not take our cues from certain countries in Europe.
Spain, Ireland, France.
Yes, those are among the countries that the Israeli government has said have turned their backs on it.
The list is of course longer and the main villains change over time, but yes, the countries mentioned here certainly appear in that context.
Speaking of values, the use of force and security more broadly, Estonia's new national security policy document states clearly that if Russia were to attack Estonia — and what other enemy could we really be talking about — Estonia would take the war onto the enemy's territory. In principle, that seems very similar to the security thinking that Israel considers unavoidable.
Yes, that is similar to the way Israel thinks.
Another thing that comes up very often in Israeli rhetoric — above all as a major lesson from October 7 — is the idea that every potential threat will sooner or later become reality and that threats must be dealt with.
The lesson is that threats must be addressed before they become an immediate danger — in other words, threats must be eliminated preemptively. How applicable that is to our own situation is another matter because our neighborhood is not the same as Israel's and the balance of power is not the same either.
Speaking further about Western attitudes, today's situation is not really anything new. My conscious memory begins in the early 1980s when, in 1982, Israel was at war with Lebanon. Unfortunately, I received my information through Soviet propaganda programs — "Segodnya v Mire," "Mezhdunarodnaya Panorama" and there were also some Estonian-language broadcasts. The rhetoric used about Israel and the United States was very similar to what we now hear from some respected European prime ministers, foreign ministers and also some left-wing American politicians.
In that sense, everything is exactly the same as it was 40 or 50 years ago. Should that make us pessimistic or optimistic?
I cannot say. I was very young then, but I knew that Israel was clearly...
... a villain.
In Soviet propaganda, Israel was portrayed as a pawn of the imperialists and an active participant in a global conspiracy.
That image of Israel was actively shaped around the world — in the West, in the free world — during the 1970s and 1980s by the Soviet Union and its intelligence services. Much of that image-making still survives today. It is one of the Soviet Union's most "successful legacies" to the world.
I agree.
And in many ways, those same Cold War traumas also shape Israel's somewhat timid and perhaps spineless attitude today toward Russia and Ukraine. There is still the memory of how the former Soviet Union was all-powerful and coordinated Arab actions against Israel.
It seems to me that this is one of the reasons — not the only reason, but one of them — that explains the current Israeli government's very lukewarm position on Russia's war of aggression and on supporting Ukraine.
In a sense, the influence you are referring to is double-edged. On the one hand, yes, it poisoned Western thinking, but in reality it also left its mark on Israel.
If we look at the most recent war involving Israel — the war by the United States and Israel against Iran's Islamic regime — it seems that, at least in part, it is changing Israel's attitude toward Russia. Russia is an ally of Iran; they have exchanged information, weapons, people or whatever else two such states can exchange. By striking Iran, Israel and the United States have also significantly weakened Russia's position in the world. Would you agree with that?
Yes and no. I had hoped that it would change Israel's attitude toward Russia and, on the other hand, toward Ukraine more than it seems to have so far.
On the one hand, it is no surprise to Israel that Russia and Iran have been deepening their cooperation for years. Israeli intelligence — and not only Israeli intelligence — has long had a very clear picture of this, including the fact that the cooperation has been multifaceted. Nor was it probably any surprise to Israel that Russia has neither much ability nor much desire to provide material support to Iran.
For Russia, the main issue is of course that it does not want to anger Donald Trump and risk losing his goodwill. Nothing must be allowed to disrupt that situation. It was certainly no surprise that some intelligence assistance was provided.
I do not want to downplay that, but in the larger picture it is probably not enough to make anyone in Jerusalem fundamentally reassess the situation. So the trends are clear, but there is no major breakthrough in sight at the moment. My work, and that of many other European ambassadors in Israel, is to lobby for greater support for Ukraine.
In the war with Iran, one of the most frequently repeated questions in Western countries is what the objective of the war actually is. Looking at it from Tel Aviv, is there an answer to that question?
Today that is a very hot topic. The messages about the aims of the war, before it began in February — just before February 28 when everything started — were partly contradictory and more ambitious than today's reality seems to suggest. Of course, the war is not over. It remains very unclear what kind of agreements may emerge if there are negotiations. Before that, it is premature to draw up any final balance sheet.
But in general, Israel had three objectives.
First, to neutralize Iran's nuclear program — to destroy its nuclear infrastructure, seize or eliminate its uranium stockpiles and the associated facilities. More broadly, the goal was to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state.
Second, to neutralize Iran's ballistic missile capability. Israel was genuinely concerned that Iran's ability to produce ballistic missiles had been increasing rapidly in recent months, at a rate of well over 100 new missiles a month. Israel's calculation is that if the number of missiles exceeds a certain threshold — figures of around 2,000 have been mentioned — then this begins to pose a danger to Israel because of the limitations of Israel's own air defenses.
Third, the broader objective was to create the conditions for regime change. This is the issue that arouses the strongest feelings here. As we know, the regime has not been changed. Whatever Donald Trump may repeat every other day about new people being in power, the regime is in reality exactly the same, perhaps in some respects even more radicalized.
The debate now is over the semantics of what it means to create the conditions for change. Israeli media report that Mossad assessed that after the war it could take up to 12 months for the regime to collapse under its own weight. But again, that depends on the conditions under which the war ends, what happens with sanctions, frozen assets and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. There are many variables.
In summary, there were broadly three major goals: the nuclear program, the missile program and the regime itself.
From journalism, including in major Western countries, one sometimes gets the impression that people are expecting some ceremonial railroad car in the Forest of Compiègne, with men in uniform signing documents in ink and concluding a peace treaty. But that kind of ending to a war has probably never happened in the Middle East.
Probably not. At the same time, I would say that some politicians in Israel, and perhaps also in the United States, likely regret some of the very big promises they made before the war began. Expectations had been raised extremely high. As I said earlier, there was a great deal of rhetoric suggesting that this would be the war that ended all the others.
Because the ceasefire came so unexpectedly, it is clear that the president of the United States is under great domestic pressure.
The ceasefire came as a surprise to Israel and is not at all to its liking. Depending on whom you believe, it may not even have been coordinated with Israel. People feel that they spent 40 days essentially living in bomb shelters, there were casualties, around 30 people were killed in Israel, the economy partially shut down and children missed a week of school. As a result, many are asking what all of this was for.
If you ask what the general mood is, today it is one of concern and frustration. Public opinion surveys show that a large part of Israeli society believes that this war is not over. Even if the ceasefire is extended, many believe that the war will resume later this year or next year because nothing fundamental has changed from where Israel is standing.
Zooming out a little on the globe, it seems that the United States may have a somewhat larger plan. The world's central resource, oil, moves through a small number of routes. Much has been said about the Strait of Hormuz, but there is also the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal and the Strait of Malacca. If you look at American moves around these important trade routes, they all seem to point in one direction. That direction is not the Middle East, but China. Through these successive steps, the latest of which is the war against Iran, China has been put into a very different position in the world than it was in only a few months ago.
In general, people in Israel do not talk very much about China. China feels far away and Israel has so much to deal with in its immediate neighborhood that such issues are not discussed very much directly. But that line of thinking has appeared here as well.
My personal view is that if that is indeed the case — if behind all of this there is really an effort to corner China and force some larger deal — then so be it. But I am somewhat skeptical that the current U.S. administration is capable of shaping world politics in such a strategic way, given all the mistakes that have been made over the last 12 months. That is really the question for debate: how much strategy is actually behind it, as opposed to it simply seeming that way in the short term.
That is exactly what I meant. It seems to me that, in the short term, we keep living through one "the iron is floating" moment after another. There was once a famous cartoon by Marek Strandberg showing an iron falling toward the surface of the water. The photographer had captured precisely the moment when the iron was halfway submerged and next to it stood a journalist with a notebook in hand triumphantly shouting, "The iron is floating!" In my view, we keep having moments like that, when it seems to us that the iron is floating, but in reality it is naturally sinking. To understand that, one has to take a step back.
It simply seems to me that if the United States were thinking strategically about weakening China — and in the 21st century the central issue does seem to be the rivalry between the United States and China, which we see in many arenas, including the issue of artificial intelligence — then a very simple way of weakening China would be through supporting Ukraine and neutralizing Russia.
But as we know, Washington has unfortunately not chosen that path. That is where my skepticism about any deeper strategy comes from.
At the same time, if you look at American domestic politics and the differences between the two main parties — the Republicans and the Democrats — then the question of China is probably one of the very few major issues on which there is almost complete agreement between the two parties, at least among politicians in the Senate and Congress.
That is true and it was the same during the presidency of Joe Biden.
Since Barack Obama, really.
It is interesting to follow the issue of China in Israel in that sense because Israel had fairly good relations with China until about 10 years ago when things changed during the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations. A clear signal came from Washington that friendship with China had to end.
So yes, it is a somewhat longer process than just the period of Donald Trump's presidency.
That is why I ask whether there may be hope that if China is eventually pushed into a corner, the United States will tell China to instruct its dependent state, Russia, to wrap up the matter of Ukraine as quickly as possible.
Let us hope so and let us hope that we do not have to wait years longer. Hopefully that signal will come this year. At the moment, however, I do not see signs pointing in that direction.
You are a former employee of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service and have long worked on Russia. As a journalist, I too have followed Russia with great interest, inevitably in the way that all Estonians do — with fear. Because I do not see very much hope there. I recently spoke with a colleague who thought that if Russia's economic situation became very bad, the regime might begin to collapse internally. I disappointed him by saying that I do not see any possibility of that.
In your opinion. If, figuratively speaking, bread in Russia were to be rationed — and we are still some distance from that — could economic hardship, a permanent state of war and the curtailment of political rights, a shift from an authoritarian regime to a totalitarian one, really trigger internal changes in Russia?
These are difficult questions. There are many variables and in the end such developments are unpredictable.
At the moment, Russia is not yet in an economic recession. Its economy is functioning at roughly zero growth. If it did slide into recession, that would also mean, among other things, that Russia would have fewer resources to wage war.
Those resources are already much more limited than they were at the start of the war.
From where we stand, the trends are positive. Continuing sanctions and weakening Russia economically would very clearly be in our interests.
At the same time, it is of course true that Russian society appears to be deeply brainwashed. What is happening there even with kindergarten-age children — drone training and all the rest — means that we will still be living next to a sick society for many years to come.
But Vladimir Putin will not be around forever either. When Putin eventually leaves the stage, for whatever reason, that will most likely bring some period of chaos. In authoritarian systems, things do not usually happen smoothly, no matter how carefully prepared the plans in the safes of the Kremlin may be concerning who takes over and how.
The pie will have to be redistributed among the oligarchs and the siloviki and that will certainly create tensions. It will also almost certainly mean that, for a while, there will be less attention devoted to external problems.
Should we expect a new perestroika or something like it? I would say the chances are rather small.
In general, my attitude is that thinking about Russia through the lens of fear does not help us. We should be realists and always prepare for the worst, while at the same time understanding who we are. Estonia remains in NATO, although we can leave aside for the moment the question of NATO's current state of health.
What has irritated me are all these stories saying that "Narva is next" because people often fail to understand the importance of Ukraine in Putin's thinking, the importance of Belarus and the importance of Russia's other neighboring states.
That does not mean that, in ranking those priorities, there could not be a miscalculation. Nor does it mean that Russia could not try to use us as a way of testing NATO. One can certainly imagine such scenarios. But there is no automatic assumption that we are somehow next and already in the crosshairs.

Unfortunately, in recent weeks we ourselves have contributed to drawing up these "Narva is next" theories. Do I have it right then that you have in your mind an imagined map of Russia as Putin sees it and, in your view, the former Baltic provinces are not on it.
In my assessment, they are not. I say that also on the basis of what I know from my previous work and what I took away from it: Russia, or Vladimir Putin, is not trying to recreate the Soviet Union, even though at times the headlines make it seem that way.
Putin has an obsession with Ukraine. With Belarus, he already has everything properly under control, so there is no problem there. But Ukraine is the country that he feels he must control. Entire books have been written about when and where that realization came to him in the 1990s — that without controlling Ukraine, Russia cannot be a great power.
There really are signs of a crusade mentality there and at least in the short term there seems to be little willingness to compromise.
Let me test one more theory. Knowing Russia a little, one thing seems fairly certain: things never develop the way they logically appear they should and there are always surprises. Is that more or less the right approach?
I think that is the right approach.
Yevgeny Prigozhin's mutiny a couple of years ago reminded us how fragile the Russian system really is. It appears all-powerful and ironclad until suddenly something happens that nobody thought possible — that a group of men would march on Moscow.
So I do not know whether that gives us hope or what exactly it gives us, but Russia is probably not as strong on the inside as it appears.
By contrast, looking at Israel, it seems that Israel really is strong internally, even though there is also a great deal of polarization here. The two situations are simply not comparable.
So, returning to the beginning, there are indeed things we can learn from Israel.
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Editor: Marcus Turovski, Laura Raudnagel









