President Trump’s recent comments, suggesting some openness to revisiting the decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is potentially good news for U.S. economic and geopolitical interests.
Religion is playing an increasingly pervasive role, threatening Indonesia’s national ideology, a tradition of pluralism, inclusiveness, moderation, and tolerance that is known as Pancasila. This trend is displayed most dramatically when terrorists strike at churches, but has been manifest in the political realm for some time, and very clearly in the important 2017 Jakarta local election.
Four years ago, I set out to New Delhi for what promised to be an exciting tenure as Ambassador of Israel to India. My service as the head of MASHAV (Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation) prior to this posting had introduced me to the potential of the growing partnership between India and Israel through development. As ambassador, I soon learned just how strong and diverse the bond between our countries really is.
Together, API and IsraAID have brought emergency humanitarian assistance to Fiji, the Philippines, Japan, Nepal, Vanuatu, and Sri Lanka following powerful and destructive storms, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes
Four days after the catastrophe, the first Israeli search-and-rescue team arrived in the Tōhoku region and began to provide much-needed humanitarian relief. Israel was the first nation to establish a field hospital, and by the following week, IsraAID had initial operations up and running in Miyagi Prefecture, where the effects of the tsunami were especially destructive