Currently Israeli scientists are among those working to produce a treatment or vaccine for the coronavirus; over a century ago it was a Jew named Waldemar (a/k/a Mordechai Wolff) Haffkine who was performing cutting-edge research on how to treat the most dangerous epidemics. Born in Russia in 1860, Haffkine apprenticed himself to Louis Pasteur. Udi Edery tells his story:

Haffkine . . . after tireless research, managed to develop a cholera vaccine based on attenuated bacteria. People may have been dying in masses of a rampant pandemic, but no one stepped up to support Haffkine’s research. He decided to take a drastic step . . . to prove the vaccine’s credibility: he picked up a syringe full of an attenuated strain of cholera, inserted the needle into his arm, and injected the disease straight into his bloodstream.

Although this trial was successful, Haffkine failed to convince the French authorities or medical establishment to get on board. Britain, by contrast, was eager to stop the cholera outbreaks ravaging India, and sent Haffkine to Bangladesh to administer inoculations there. But this wasn’t the end of Haffkine’s success:

An outbreak of another disease, the bubonic plague in Bombay, impelled the Indian authorities to turn to Haffkine again to help them find a vaccine. In January 1897, after three months of intensive work, Haffkine once again inoculated himself with an experimental vaccine for the plague. [It] worked. Haffkine very quickly started to experiment on other people.

In 1902, Haffkine arrived at the village of Mulkowal in order to inoculate the villagers. Several days after the treatment was given, nineteen villagers died from tetanus. Accusatory fingers immediately pointed at Haffkine, with complaints emerging that something had gone wrong with one of the vaccine bottles.

Rumor spread like wildfire that the vaccine was infected with tetanus. A commission of inquiry was appointed which found Haffkine guilty. Soon after, he was deported back to England in shame. The episode came to be known as the “Little Dreyfus Affair,” and was accompanied by an air of anti-Semitism, which Haffkine was familiar with from his life in Russia.

Later exonerated, Haffkine retired in 1914, devoting the rest of his life to Jewish and Zionist activism.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.