What China’s Plans for the Eastern Mediterranean Imply for Greece and Israel

In 2013, Beijing announced its “Belt and Road initiative,” which involves the expansion of commercial ties, together with sponsorship of infrastructure projects, to connect China with Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Official rhetoric speaks of creating a 21st-century version of the ancient Silk Road as well as a parallel “maritime Silk Road.” To this end, China has made various economic inroads into the eastern Mediterranean. One Chinese company, for instance, has purchased the rights to manage the Greek port of Piraeus, while another has won a contract to construct a new port in the Israeli city of Ashdod. As George Tzogopoulos explains, both Greece and Israel, despite their very different economic situations, share an interest in making the most of economic ties with China without allowing it to upset the U.S.-backed geopolitical order, and both have reasons for concern:

Israel’s main source of anxiety is the proliferation of non-conventional Chinese arms in the Middle East. Beijing has supplied weapons systems and missile technology to countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Libya, which have leaked them to terrorist groups like Hizballah. Jerusalem is particularly concerned about China’s ties with Iran. . . . Improved Sino-Israeli relations have not deterred Beijing from exporting arms to Jerusalem’s potential enemies, including the Islamic Republic. China remains committed to the 2015 agreement on Iran’s nuclear program and is not pleased with Donald Trump’s doubts about it. . . .

From a broader perspective, China’s developing relations with Greece and Israel are part of a multidimensional foreign policy in the Mediterranean basin that also includes . . . Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, and Turkey. At first glance, Beijing’s motivations are economic and geopolitical. But some voices are warning against China’s potential involvement in the Mediterranean, seeing security implications as well as militarization dangers. This argument is linked to Beijing’s White Paper on armed forces published in April 2013 that stipulates protection of overseas energy resources and Chinese nationals abroad as major security concerns to be shouldered by the country’s military. . . .

[Furthermore], Sino-Russian naval exercises took place in the Mediterranean in May 2015, increasing Western concerns. . . . Beijing’s growing footprint in the Mediterranean presents both a challenge and an opportunity for the U.S. and Europe. In that regard, Greece and Israel cannot overlook developing military ties between China on the one hand and Turkey and Iran on the other. . . .

Read more at BESA Center

More about: China, Greece, Israel & Zionism, Israel diplomacy, Israel-China relations

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society