While Israel leads the world in coronavirus vaccinations per capita, vaccination rates remain very low among the country’s Bedouin, many of whom are suspicious of the vaccine. In one instance, a village received 1,000 doses, but only twenty residents agreed to receive a shot, and the remaining doses had to be discarded. Mohammed al-Nabari—a physician and the former mayor of a Bedouin village—heads a nonprofit dedicated to helping his fellow Bedouin. He describes its efforts to rectify the situation:

The low vaccination rates in the Bedouin community reflected the low amounts of trust between the community and the government. Yet we were able to change that, thanks to strong pre-existing relationships among community leaders, the government, and those in the private sector with access to resources and expertise. Those relationships were built long before the pandemic, and could only be activated effectively in a crisis because of years of building the infrastructure of trust.

Nabari takes as an example the village of Sa’wa, whose residents were reluctant to be vaccinated before Hassan, the local imam:

In [the Bedouin] community, the imam’s word carries more weight than any scientist or government official could ever muster. Vaccinating the people of Sa’wa depended on Hassan, and he was eager to lead by example. But at forty-six, he was too young to be eligible for a vaccine during this early stage of the rollout, and waiting to vaccinate the imam meant further excruciating delays in vaccinating vulnerable residents throughout Sa’wa.

[A]fter calling upon relationships we had developed over the years with various ministries and medical insurance agencies, Hassan’s cell phone pinged with a text confirming his appointment later that day. Word spread rapidly that the imam had received the vaccine, even more so after he spoke about his vaccination at Friday prayers and encouraged others to make appointments. Over the following days, we saw a steady increase as more and more residents signed up.

In my hometown of Hura, we received unprecedented support from the Israeli Home Front Command; a Muslim cleric rode through the town with a bullhorn atop an Israeli military vehicle, shouting vaccine information to passersby. We still have much work to do, but early data of our efforts shows promise. Just three days after initiating our strategy, the number of people vaccinated in Hura surged from just 8 percent to 25.4 percent.

While I’ve seen much speculation—some reasonable and well informed, some quite the opposite—about why Jerusalem chose Friday morning to begin its campaign against Iran, the most obvious explanation seems to be the most convincing. First, 60 days had passed since President Trump warned that Tehran had 60 days to reach an agreement with the U.S. over its nuclear program. Second, Israeli intelligence was convinced that Iran was too close to developing nuclear weapons to delay military action any longer. Edward Luttwak explains why Israel was wise to attack:

Iran was adding more and more centrifuges in increasingly vast facilities at enormous expense, which made no sense at all if the aim was to generate energy. . . . It might be hoped that Israel’s own nuclear weapons could deter an Iranian nuclear attack against its own territory. But a nuclear Iran would dominate the entire Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, with which Israel has full diplomatic relations, as well as Saudi Arabia with which Israel hopes to have full relations in the near future.

Luttwak also considers the military feats the IDF and Mossad have accomplished in the past few days:

To reach all [its] targets, Israel had to deal with the range-payload problem that its air force first overcame in 1967, when it destroyed the air forces of three Arab states in a single day. . . . This time, too, impossible solutions were found for the range problem, including the use of 65-year-old airliners converted into tankers (Boeing is years later in delivering its own). To be able to use its short-range F-16s, Israel developed the “Rampage” air-launched missile, which flies upward on a ballistic trajectory, gaining range by gliding down to the target. That should make accuracy impossible—but once again, Israeli developers overcame the odds.