The Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Israel to Georgia, Ran Gidor, spoke to InterPressNews in an exclusive interview about the current political and social developments in Georgia. In addition, the Ambassador discussed the fight against coronavirus by Israel and Georgia and the cooperation between the two countries.

- Mr. Ran, first of all, let's start with the political part - Yesterday, the Georgian Dream decided to nulify the April 19 agreement. How would you assess this decision after several months of negotiations and the political crisis, and then the agreement reached in the country?

- First of all, I have to say that I don’t consider it my job to interfere in Georgia’s internal affairs, or criticize any of the political actors. Georgia has been through a very stormy time since last October, since last elections. It’s natural for people to feel anxiety, to worry about the future of the country. However, I was posted in Georgia in the 90’s, as Deputy Ambassador and I remember the enormous political challenges Georgia faced back then. So Georgian people are famously resilient and throughout history they’ve always had to deal with all sorts of crisis and they’ve always dealt very well and I have no doubt this time again Georgia will live up to its reputation and overcome this crisis. Having said that, Israel, just like all other friends of Georgia, would like to see stability, the kind of stability that would help Georgia overcome the crisis caused by the pandemic and achieve the kind of prosperity that Georgian people deserve. Recent events, of course, don’t contribute much to stability, and I have to say that unfortunately in recent months we’ve seen sharp increase in the frequency and volume of fair complaints by Israeli investors and Israeli business community, which is finding more and more difficult to do business in Georgia. I am looking forward to working very closely with Georgian authorities in order to fix this situation, because I would like to attract more Israeli business and more Israeli investment and I don’t want to get to the point where I have no choice but to warn Israeli investors against risking the money in this country.

- Recently, there has been a special aggression against journalists in Georgia. Why do you think this is happening, how should we fight it and can you share the experience of Israel - what is the relationship between different groups of society and the state with the media?

- Freedom of the press, freedom of journalism is one of the most important cornerstones of any democracy. So it’s unthinkable that journalists would be attacked or prevented or hindered from doing their job. This is simply unthinkable. The events of the 5^th of July were absolutely shocking for all of us who are friends of Georgia. Having said that, let’s take a step back and remember that Georgia has a very vibrant media and press environment, much more so than many other older democracies. In fact, the kind of freedom the media enjoys in Georgia is the envy of many countries in this spot of the world. This is why this is an asset that Georgia should keep in order to become a symbol and pillar for the kind of freedoms that other countries could only aspire to. You asked me about Israel – in Israel too we’ve been going through a very tempestuous, very stormy political crisis in the past two years we had two general elections and that caused a lot of polarization and friction within the Israeli society, and in Israel, just like Georgia and other countries, there are those forces within society, especially the extreme right, which criticize the press and sometimes try to prevent the press from doing their job. I think ultimately in Israel, as well as in Georgia, as well as in any other country in the world, it’s down to the authorities, first of all to provide protection to journalists, from allowing them to do their jobs, but secondly, it’s down to the authorities to investigate and prosecute and punish not only those aggressors that physically attacked journalists, but the people that insights the violence. This is our responsibility as democratic societies to do so.

- As we know, Israel is one of the countries where the rights of the LGBTQ community are most protected. How did you achieve this result, what benefits do such equality and tolerance bring to the society, and what approach would you recommend to Georgian officials regarding the problem?

- I would like to remind all of us that the right to equality, all kinds of equality and diversity is enshrined within the Georgian constitution. Nobody forced Georgia to change the constitution and introduce this protection – this was the choice of Georgian people and we are very happy, because that means that Georgia is the part of the family of enlightened nations. Now, in Israel also this change that you mentioned, the fact that LGBTQ is now widely accepted in Israel, didn’t happen overnight – it was a long process that lasted for more than 20 years, and even today we have within Israeli society certain segments, parts of the population that find it very difficult to accept this kind of equality for LGBTQ’s. So I perfectly understand why it’s still difficult for Georgia, a young country that only won its independence 30 years ago, and is very religious, very traditional, why many people find it challenging to accept this equality.

However, we have to remember that human rights are universal, they are not relative to location or geography – you can’t say that in some parts of the world people are equal and in other parts of the world they are not equal because traditions are different. Universal rights and human rights equate each other. Now, the same way that it took some time for Israel to get there, I believe that it will take some time to get there also in Georgia. But you asked me how we achieved it – we achieved it partly through public outreach and public education, and this is why Pride is so important. Because if LGBTQ people can only practice their preferences and orientation privately and secretly, then this is not fully quality. The whole point about Pride is to go out there, to show pride, to show equality and to educate public opinion that this is the cost that needs to be followed – that’s what happened in Israel and over a period of time, public opinion got used to it and now we have a Deputy Foreign Minister who is openly gay, we have a Minister of Health who is openly gay, we have army generals and even Ambassadors that are openly gay. This march of history can’t be reversed, and I’m confident that Georgian society will also get there sooner or later.

- The events that took place in Israel a few months ago became the center of attention of the whole world. The Israeli defense system was the object of admiration among Georgians. How can you recall this period for yourself and tell us briefly about Israel's approach to defense? In your opinion, can Georgia take anything from Israel as an example in this direction, something that would be realistic for our country to do?

- Israel has been surrounded by enemies from the first day of its existence. When Israel announced its independence, the next morning we were invaded by 8 Arab countries. So, unfortunately we’ve been existing in a situation of national emergency since 1948, for 73 years. Now, the Israeli approach to defense is based on several pillars. First pillar is that it’s a national duty, it’s every citizen’s duty to defend his or her country, which is why in Israel almost everyone goes to the army – men as well as women. The second pillar is that we have no one to rely on, even though we’ve been enjoying the support of our closest and greatest friend, the USA, actually it’s all about self-reliance – we learned this lesson from the Holocaust that if you don’t train yourself to be strong enough, then ultimately no one else will take your place and defend you, which is why Israel has been developing its most sophisticated weapons system by itself. You mentioned our famous Iron Dome system, which is the world’s first and best missile defense system, which was developed entirely in Israel, with Israeli brainpower. So the edge that we have in terms of defense and security is based on education and technology. We are very small country, we don’t have a big army, however, our army is the most technologically advanced in the Middle East, and one of the most technologically advanced in the world. Now you asked about lessons for Georgia. As I said, I’ve been in Georgia twice, in the 90’s and now and I have many Georgian friends and they always like to draw analogy between Israel and Georgia, but I think, whereas Israelis and Georgians have a lot in common, when it comes to defense and security, the analogy is misplaced, because we have always had superpower supporting us, whereas Georgia is confronted by a superpower. It’s not the same, also, we were always surrounded by enemies, Georgia enjoys very friendly relations with three out of its four immediate neighbors. So I’m not sure if there’s anything about the Israeli experience that can offer any kind of example to Georgia, with one exception – the importance of education, especially education for science and technology, that will make Georgia not only secure, but also prosperous.

- What is the current situation in Israel in terms of fighting Covid - How is vaccination going now and what can you tell us about the cases? We recall that there were rumors that a medicine created in Israel had shown promising results against Covid. Currently, what can we say about this medicine?

- Yes, Israel too is battling the Delta Variant, which is considered the major threat now to public health. However, Israel is fortunately at a much better place than most other countries, because of the advanced vaccination campaign. Israel started before most other Western countries and achieved a phenomenal rate of vaccination. When we are talking about national population, 62% of the population already had 2 vaccines, and 57% - one vaccine. Now, it’s important to look beyond this statistic and realize that the part of the population that is not vaccinated yet is mostly children up to the age of 16. If you look at age groups, 80% of population of the age of 30 have been vaccinated, and over 90% of the population beyond the age of 50. In recent days, because of Delta Variant, we have a daily average of about 2 300 infections every day, but the rate of positive tests is only 2.3%, which is very low. Right now we have 275 people in hospitals and out of them only 160 are in a serious condition. So, for a nation of almost 10 million people, to have 160 people in serious condition is still manageable. Of course we want to reduce it to zero but this seems impossible right now.

Israeli developed a medicine, yes, it’s very promising, we move now to the most advanced phase of testing it and we are testing it on volunteers, in Israel and in some other countries. Hopefully, it can be ready for public use in the very near future.

- We remember very impressive stories about the former Prime Minister of Israel and the government in general, in terms of how the state managed to vaccinate the vast majority of the population in the shortest time possible. Georgia still has a hard time fighting Covid, vaccination has started, but the pace is not impressive, and the number of infected people is growing day by day. Of course, the responsibility of the population has its share in this, but how right do you think it is for the Governmemnt to put a special emphasis on this and how do you assess the current struggle of the Georgian government with Covid overall? If there were any shortcomings, even on the issue of vaccination, what could have been done, or can be done better now?

- First of all, let us remind ourselves that exactly a year ago Georgia was considered the greenest country in the world and a shining example for the international community, some health experts from Europe were turning to Georgia on guidance on how to cope with the pandemic. That was not 10 years ago, only one year ago. And we also have to remember that yes, the pace of vaccination in Georgia could have been more satisfactory, quicker, but look at some Western European countries, where the situation is more or less the same as in Georgia, despite having all the resources of European economies and the EU at their disposal. So I’m not sure that Georgia is in such a bad place – it could always be better, but it’s not in such a bad place as some people suggest. And again, we have to realize that the fact that this debate is going on shows the strength of Georgian democracy, because in some other countries it’s impossible to criticize or even suggest alternatives to what the government is doing in this respect. So this is a good indication of the healthy state of Georgian public discourse and democracy.

However, I think that if I could offer advice to Georgian Government, it will read as follows – from my time in Georgia, both now and in the 90’s, I realize that Georgian people tend to adopt very quickly all kinds of conspiracy theories, often even super educated, super-intelligent people, instead of getting information from credible, reliable sources. They believe what they hear in a taxi, or in a metro, what the neighbors tell them, what they heard in the street. So there’s no distinction between quality information and basic rumors. On a more dangerous level, there’s no distinction between scientific facts and superstition. I think what the authorities could do more is to highlight this distinction that not all types of information are the same – some information are credible, scientifically based, empirically proven, and other types of information are just gossip, rumors or superstitions. I think here is the responsibility of all credible governments to highlight this difference, in order to convince people to go out and vaccinate themselves.

- About a year ago, we talked about the cooperation between Georgia and Israel in the fields of business and education. Then you were the new Ambassador to Georgia and we discussed a lot of projects already. How would you summarize the projects you have implemented in these areas during this one year and what are the Embassy's current plans?

- First of all, we have to realize that pandemic has interfered with all our plans and because of Covid, many projects were either slowed down, rescheduled or canceled. Additionally, we’ve had political crisis both in Georgia and in Israel, which meant that the governments were not in a position to function very smoothly and efficiently. However, we tried to implement some groundbreaking projects and we’re very optimistic about the future. Next year we are going to mark the 30^th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Georgia, and we have great plans.

I would like to mention just a few highlights on what we have been doing since our first interview. First of all, MASHAV, the Israeli equivalent of USAID, the Israeli International Development Cooperation Agency has been training Georgian experts throughout the year, especially women in high tech, public health care, agriculture, water treatment, many other topics. Only last week a group of 18 Georgian agriculture experts returned from Israel, despite Covid – this was the first time in 30 years that Israel MASHAV designed a course just for Georgian people – vegetable cultivation and advanced irrigation technology. We have also supported Georgia in its battle against Covid, Israel and MASHAV gave an assistance to the Ministry of Health, to the Georgia Office of the WHO, to NCDC and to the Georgian Red Cross.

We have also brought over advanced Israeli equipment for water purification, because in Georgia, especially in rural areas, drinking water is very often polluted. So we have installed advanced Israeli equipment in schools in Guria region an soon also in other regions around Georgia, allowing schoolchildren to enjoy clean, purified drinking water.

We’ve also promoted a lot of cultural exchange, for example, the Israeli Embassy was the only Embassy to launch a project around UNESCO Tbilisi World Capital of Books. We announced a competition for short stories, which are now going to be published as an anthology by Inteleqti publishing house. We also translated five Israeli theatre plays by young women writers that will be published by Sulakauri as an anthology. So, as you can see, we are active in public health, in agriculture, in fostering bilateral chain and also in the cultural field.

Again, I have to stress that unfortunately in the recent months, we’ve encountered more and more obstacles to do in business or investing in this country, which is something I hope to solve with assistance of the authorities, otherwise it will be very challenging to convince Israeli business community and prospective business investors to risk the money here.

- What can you say about employment for Georgian citizens in Israel - is there a plan to increase the quota? What information should job seekers find and how should they prepare to get jobs in your country?

- According to the agreement that we signed a few months ago for the temporary employment in Israel of auxiliary workers, we decided on an initial quota of 1 000 people. Unfortunately, there have not been many candidates, we were surprised, we expected thousands of candidates, but very few applied, because the criteria, professional qualifications are very specific. First of all, I would like to say how much I respect the Georgian authorities for sticking to those criteria, they didn’t cut corners, they didn’t make any compromises, what was agreed between the two governments was implemented.

However, we are now considering to change a little bit the criteria in order to make it easier for Georgian auxiliary workers to apply for this position in Israel. We desperately need these people to come to Israel as soon as possible. So, hopefully we will fill this quota of 1 000 people, and then we will consider whether to increase it further.